Just an amusing thought:
perhaps the Dharma Initiative (or whoever is pulling the strings) was trying to create a society that COULD endure, not self-destroy. If there was a world catastrophe, the Island might represent a place to start over (for the human race). But...would humanity just destroy itself all over again?
The variables, the Losties, represented a cross section of real survivors who might, if guided, be ideal citizens once they could diffuse their own aggression and learn to sacrifice. Redemption.
If so, now look at this Forum.
Did this forum result from a self-weeding evolutionary process that sought to find an "island" that could live in harmony with one another and not seek to destroy?