How "real" is LOST?

It may be that the very first Humans to have landed on the Island drove it insane when it scanned their memories and observed their activities

These “first-contact” humans came/fought/destroyed/corrupted - and the Island, struggling to understand these strange creatures, absorbed their collective Insanity and has been struggling to heal itself ever since.

Successive Human visits to the Island resulted in similar destructive cycles of arrive/fight/destroy/corrupt until the Island created a Shield to keep these annoying creatures away.

Over the course of its encounters with Humans, the Island scanned their memories/experiences which included Names (LOST has a surprisingly limited stock of names), Relationships (Powerful Father and Distant Child, Poor Son working for Rich father-in-law, Child raised by Single Mother who tells Child that Father is Dead, Divorcing Parents etc) Life Experiences (Special Births, Vehicle Collisions, Serious Injuries resulting in Prosthetic Limbs, Encounters with Psychic Healers) Objects (Knife, Machete, Hand-Gun, Rifle, Geiger Counter, MacCutcheon Bottle) and even Sound Effects (Printer chatter, chain/cog/ratchet, Fog-horn, SKU scanner beep)

The Island can Manifest objects, animals and people - dead or alive, whether there’s a body handy or not.  It can also affect the perceptions and memories of Humans by sending them Lucid Dreams and Waking Hallucinations - especially if they are fatigued, injured, emotionally agitated, under the influence of drugs or ill - any kind of Altered State will do.

I believe that Jacob and The Foe are Manifestations of The Island and represent its final effort to heal itself.  These two Entities embody the Light and Dark Aspects of the Island, its Optimistic and Pessimistic Points of View.  The Final Iteration (aka S6) of the Fight/Destroy/Corrupt cycle will decide once and for all whether Humanity deserves to survive or whether it should be Exterminated.  Humanity is on trial as it was on Star Trek TNG’s “Far Point” and “All good things” Episodes.

Just as Jacob and The Foe embody the Island’s Optimistic and Pessimistic Aspects, the Children of Jacob and the Children of The Foe embody their Characteristics:

The Children of Jacob believe in Free Will, Choice, Honesty, Selflessness, Loyalty, Non-violence, Penitence and Forgiveness - all of which Jack was tested for (by Ben) at Hydra.  These are the folks who used sling-shots and trank-darts instead of guns - and we’ve seen precious little of them.  These may be the members of Family Richard who are currently at The Temple. 

The Foe’s Children are cruel, unforgiving Haters who are quite willing to kill (using guns or grenades) without hesitation or remorse.  Ethan, Danny, Colleen, Mikhail, Bea, Ryan, Greta, Bonnie, Jason and others belonged to this group - and, thanks to Ben have been erased in Ben’s Second Purge.  Their Leader is/was Charles Widmore - whose personality they reflect.

In “The Incident”, we saw Jacob’s fluency in Foreign Languages.  Among his Children, we’ve seen Sun (English), Charlotte (Korean), Juliet (Latin), Bernard (Morse code) and  Achara (English) express this same skill.    

I kinda hate this idea, but I’m coming to believe that our Losties (including CW, Eloise, and Daddy Paik) are Expressions or Manifestations of The Island’s Consciousness, that all of LOST is an Illusion, a Long Con, a Magic Trick ...  that Recycled Props, Recycled Names, Recycled Scenarios, Spoken Lines and even Sound Effects are clues that LOST is a Game, a Thought Experiment playing out over Six Seasons in the Mind of The Island as it “decides” whether or not Every Single One of us is Dead.