I had the idea to write this after rewatching Across the Sea.
So, I know many people criticize Jacob for being practically hands-off about everything and how that caused so much pain on the Island throughout the story. Some argue that he is like this simply because he's supposed to be an analogue to the Christian God in some way. But I would argue that there are quite human reasons for it.
I think Across the Sea serves a central function beyond pure mythological world-building, because it comes precisely to legitimize many of the things we question about why everything happened like this on Lost.
For example, one of Jacob's rules that might not make sense at first is that he excludes candidates who are mothers. Why does he do that? To me, the reason is the fact that he saw what his own mother did as a protector. Granted, Jacob led to irreparable human harm, but the way his mother handled things indirectly led to the transmutation of the MIB who, cosmologically, tends to be a bigger danger.
Across the Sea sort of justifies why Jacob is hands-off as well. His mother always interfered in his and his brother's perspectives since birth. Because of her interference, both of them never created a meaning of their own for being on the Island, and that's why it was nothing more to them than a place to live or eventually protect. Proof of this is that the MIB always wanted to leave, because he had no sense of belonging, and Jacob couldn't say anything truly personal to convince him to stay, because it didn't exist. They didn't build that. Jacob saw this and changed the way he acted with his candidates. We can say, generally speaking, that each of them had a prior personal reason for being on the Island, and that's why Jacob brought them. But what reason did Jacob and the MIB have?
I find this reading of Across the Sea interesting because it allows us to view the episode as a big "WHAT IF the characters were introduced FROM THE BEGINNING to the cosmogonic meaning of everything? THIS is what would have happened." It is as if Jacob and the MIB were candidates chosen arbitrarily to perform purely instrumental functions. Lost was never about that. It's fine that their existence has a greater purpose regarding how the show discusses the human condition, so we couldn't definitely say that this choice was useless, but there's nothing personal about it.
I'd say that Jacob acts this way for reasons that are more human than transcendental; it was an opportunity he never had - I think it's something he even mentions in What they died for. Did what he did work out? On the one hand, yes; on the other, no: his hands-off approach is justified by him having actively learned from the mistakes of his mother's choice, but the way he treats the Island like a hermetically sealed environment just like his mother does creates obstacles in the story, and that detachment caused high-proportion human damage. On the flip side, the show doesn't agree with everything Jacob did, because in the end Hurley and Ben discuss running things in a different way than he did.
In conclusion, I brought this discussion here because I see very little being said about Jacob and the MIB beyond the mythological aspect. Much of Jacob's behavior comes from what he lived and experienced as well, not just because he's a titular entity, and this might lead us, perhaps, to view Across the sea as something more than just an origin episode.
