burroughs, p-orridge, wells, the klf, and LOST

I never thought I'd be thinking so hard about an Entertainment Weekly article. But this piece about the season premiere of Lost really has my head spinning. Especially because it attempts to tie the show's mysteries to systems of control. Anyone who reads this blog has ready more than a few posts about Burroughs and P-Orridge, who devote(d) a great deal of time to discovering and destroying these systems.

The EW article quotes this section from a book called Massive Change:

''Most of the time, we live our lives within invisible systems, blissfully unaware of the artificial life, the intensely designed infrastructures that support them. Accidents, disasters, crises — [when] systems fail we become temporarily conscious of the extraordinary force and power of design, and the effects that it generates. Every accident provides a brief moment of awareness of real life, what is actually happening, and our dependence on the underlying systems of design. Every plane crash is a rupture, a shock to the system, precisely because our experience of flight is so carefully designed away from the reality of the event. As we sip champagne, read the morning paper, and settle in before takeoff, we choose not to experience the torque, the thrust, the speed, the altitude, the temperature, the thousands of pounds of explosive jet fuels cradled beneath us, the infinite complexity of onboard systems, and the very real risks and dangers of takeoff and landing.''

It also lists the following as helpful in understanding this season's episodes:

Don DeLillo's Underworld. Alan Moore's V For Vendetta. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. The Book of Revelations. The Greek word thipsis. John Mayer's ''Waiting for the World to Change.'' Creed's ''My Own Prison.'' The lost continent of Mu. All things H.G. Wells. Pink Floyd. George Orwell. The defunct performance art/electronica band The KLF. The word oulipo.
And dolphins.