I wish the show would reveal more about the contestants inner journey.
The name and premise of the show, that they are alone, or even could be alone, is a religious or philosophical assertion we shouldn't accept blindly.
As Earnest Becker has been pointing out, the idea that we are autonomous individuals is rooted in modern philosophy associated with the Enlightenment through the 20th century. It is an idea so pervasive in the modern Western world, that it is nearly impossible to talk about alternatives with any credibility. When you marry the autonomous self with the ideas of the godless atheism or the equally cold Deism of Evangelical Calvism, which puts us in here and leaves God out there, then we get a show like this where the people are truly alone. The natural world is an inanimate clockwork machine and God is somewhere but not here.
I've come out of the Evangelical background hinted at by both Mike and David. A friend and backpacking buddy of mine is an Old Testement scolar. He notes that in the ancient Hebrew mind, one can't conceive of a self outside of their relationship to a) the divine, b) the people, and c) the rest of Creation. The pattern shown in personal retreats to wild places in the Old Testement is a time when a person encounters the divine in a deep manner.
My sense is that Nicole is functionally closer to this ancient Hebrew understanding, even if she doesn't use that language to describe it.
My hope for David, and for the other contestants, and for all people is that they would know they are never truly alone.
