Does Ben truly hate Dharma?

[JB Sawyer]

A question that bears some thinking about. You would certainly think so seeing as he played the key hand in killing the entire civilisation of Dharma; but then if the hatred ran that deep why does Ben continue to live in 'their' barracks, to use 'their' stations, to use 'their' equipment etc? Surely if you hold such a deep resentment for something you wouldn't want anything to do with that group of people or whatever.

So the question could come down to what extent does Ben hate Dharma? Did Ben merely see his father as a symbol of Dharma, and so therefore everytime he thought of Dharma he thought of the man that effectively ruined his life? Could this be the root cause of Ben's hate, and not the organisation themselves. Or is it more that Dharma caused Ben to live the life he does, to cause the resentment he received from Roger, and so his hate is truly directed at the organisation themselves? Or does he simply disagree with the way Dharma went about things, and wants to do things his way, to make sure that all remnants of Dharma never touch the Island again (a very hatred filled thought)?

But it would appear that Ben uses the full scale of Dharma facilities available to him, and while in no way am I suggesting he just abandon shelter available to him or anything like that, Ben does seem to still use the hatches for experiments as Dharma intended i.e. the bears in the cages. So can Ben truly hate Dharma but continue their work in such a way?

*On a side note, who is saving the world? Dharma claimed to be saving it in the Swan (Kelvin) yet Ben seems pretty adamant that he is saving the world a different way (as the Swan seemed to hold fairly little importance in Ben's plans). Did Ben get the idea that the world needed saving from Dharma at all?

[Murgatroyd]

Pure hypocrisy, isn't it... claims to despise everything that Dharma stood for, but makes no attempt to 'make peace' with other occupants of the island who have no choice but to be there, makes use of Dharma's comforts and tortures his own people in its brainwashing machine. He's become the thing he hates - that does seem to be one of Lost's patterns, eg. James Ford's taking on Sawyer's/Cooper's identity; Kate's killing her father to prevent her becoming like him while turning herself into a criminal on the run; Sayid's repeatedly returning to torture. It'll be interesting, for a change, to see one of them realise it and truly come to terms with it, though Ben hasn't thus far shown much in the way of an ability to criticise his own failings....

[The_other_other]

I think part of the original 'purge' was to enable the original island inhabitants access to the equipment, stations etc. So i dont really agree that this particular point makes Ben hypocritical. Its the whole, 'Dharma was with-holding all the resources' argument.

[Murgatroyd]

Originally Posted by The_other_other

I think part of the original 'purge' was to enable the original island inhabitants access to the equipment, stations etc. So i dont really agree that this particular point makes Ben hypocritical. Its the whole, 'Dharma was with-holding all the resources' argument.

Do you reckon Ben and Alpert were okay with what Dharma was doing, then... and that they just wanted to do it all for themselves?

[The_other_other]

Originally Posted by Murgatroyd

Do you reckon Ben and Alpert were okay with what Dharma was doing, then... and that they just wanted to do it all for themselves?

i dont know, possibly. Maybe they wanted the equipment for something else, or maybe they wanted the glory. We dont actually know what Dharma was trying to do (just how they carried out tests)

[Audio Pineapple]

I don't think that he hated Dharma; his father yes, but not Dharma. I have a feeling that it might have been nothing more than picking the winning side and not letting anyone or anything get in his way. But he did first ran into the original inhabitants when he was quite young (early teenage years was it?) so for all we know he was 'groomed' into hating Dharma for a lot of years.