Severance

TELEVISION | 2022

Severance refers to a fictional biotechnology that allows individuals to surgically divide their consciousness between their professional life and personal life.

This procedure creates two distinct personas within one body: the "innie," who exists solely within the workplace and possesses no memories or knowledge of the outside world, and the "outie," who lives the individual's personal life with no recollection of their time at work.

This concept serves as a comprehensive exploration of the nature of identity, the functionality of hierarchies, and the profound implications of a system's breakdown or dysfunction at various levels, encompassing both social structures and the internal hierarchy of the human being.

The development of this narrative concurrently with the COVID-19 Pandemic adds an unusual layer of thematic resonance, particularly concerning biotech control, narrative isolation, and the concealment of full meaning from individuals.

The Concept of Severance and Identity

The fundamental premise of severance is the deliberate fragmentation of an individual's identity. This division is not merely a memory block but a creation of entirely separate experiential streams.

Identity as Hierarchy:

The underlying philosophy posits that all beings inherently function as hierarchies, composed of integrated wholes that comprise various parts, which themselves can be considered wholes to their own sub-parts, extending downward to fundamental levels such as atoms or quantum fields.

Within a human being, a "through line" exists, serving as the unifying aspect that aggregates memories and constructs a coherent personal story, thereby establishing a singular identity. Beneath this through line, individuals possess sub-personalities, desires, and thoughts that are manifold and may, at times, compete or even demonstrate hostility towards one another.

Integration of these disparate internal elements into the unifying through line is crucial for internal cohesion. Similarly, the human body functions hierarchically, with the conscious individual as the through line directing members like arms and legs, which themselves contain organs, subsystems, and cells.

Severance as Fragmentation:

The narrative illustrates that fragmentation can precede the biotech procedure itself. For instance, Mark, the central character, undergoes severance due to the trauma of his wife's death, which had already caused a breakdown in his marriage—conceived as the union of two people forming one body.

This prior fragmentation, coupled with his inability to manage his life and work due to distress, led him to opt for the severance procedure. The disintegration of unity is further exemplified by his and his wife's prior struggle to conceive a child, an endeavour representing a higher form of unity beyond the individual, which preceded his wife's death and his decision to undergo severance. This process of fragmentation is thus depicted as occurring within the meta-narrative even before the science fiction technology is introduced.

Metaphorical Severance in Human Experience:

Severance is portrayed as a condition experienced more frequently than commonly recognised. Sin, for example, is presented as a form of severance, where an internal desire or thought detaches itself from its connection to the greater whole of the person. Such a fragmented desire or thought disregards the repercussions of its actions on the individual's entirety, opting for behaviours that lack integration.

Adultery serves as a prime illustration: a person engaging in it develops a "substructure of thoughts and of desires and of intentions" that prioritises its own limited goals over the complete well-being and vertical alignment of the individual, leading to significant disruption.

Similarly, the act of lying to impress another person represents a form of severance, as the individual momentarily disregards their authentic, whole self in favour of a fabricated persona to gain a minor advantage, such as prestige or influence. Furthermore, the disjunction between the mind's through line and the body's instinctive desires, such as hunger or sexual urges, provides another analogous image of severance.

The Innie-Outie Dynamic

The relationship between the outie and the innie is fundamentally hierarchical, not egalitarian. The outie is presented as the integrated and deciding entity, possessing the authority to initiate the innie's existence and, crucially, to terminate it by resigning from work. The innie, therefore, exists as a "prisoner" of the outie's choice. This dynamic serves as a powerful metaphor for internal human struggles: if an individual allows certain internal systems, such as desires, to become independent and severed from their holistic being, such disunion invariably leads to severe difficulties. This internal state is depicted as a form of alienation, where specific aspects of one's self are disconnected from the overall integrated being.

Severance as a Social and Corporate Phenomenon (Lumen Industries)

The concept of severance extends beyond the individual, manifesting as a pervasive social phenomenon. The narrative illustrates that severance operates simultaneously at multiple levels, particularly within the structure of Lumen Industries.

Corporate Fragmentation:

The severed employees within Lumen are analogous to fragmented aspects of a person, functioning as isolated processes disconnected from the larger integrated entity.

The leadership of Lumen, unlike its workers, remains unsevered, possessing comprehensive knowledge and a full understanding of the company's operations and objectives. In contrast, the severed workers are deliberately kept ignorant of their overarching purpose, performing tasks without complete comprehension of their meaning.

Lumen's Contradictions and Absurdity:

Lumen Industries is depicted as embodying contradictions. Its name, "Lumen," suggests "light" or "luminary," implying a celestial or enlightened nature. However, its logo features a drop of water, symbolising something earthly or beneath.

The company's slogan, "united in Severance," is an overt oxymoron, a paradoxical statement that highlights the inherent contradiction within its operational philosophy. This slogan's inherent absurdity is compared to political rhetoric that equates identity solely with diversity, creating a similar contradiction. Absurdity itself is employed as a tool of severance within the company, as employees are intentionally kept from understanding the meaning behind their work.

Architectural Symbolism and Alienation:

The architecture of the Lumen facility reflects the hierarchical and fragmented nature of severance. It possesses a vertical dimension, symbolised by an elevator that transports the integrated outie down into the basement, where fragmentation and severance occur. This vertical descent is likened to the fragmentation of a higher identity into lower, dislocated identities.

Furthermore, a deeper, subterranean level exists, where individuals can be severed into numerous sub-personalities, exemplified by Mark's wife, Gemma, who is fragmented into 25 distinct personas.

Beyond the verticality, the severed level exhibits a horizontal dimension, functioning as a bewildering maze or puzzle. The mapping of this maze is explicitly forbidden, reinforcing the deliberate obscuration of understanding.

This design ensures that workers remain ignorant of their activities' true purpose, performing tasks that appear utterly absurd to both themselves and external observers. This scenario mirrors the alienation experienced by factory workers at the dawn of the modern age, who performed singular, isolated tasks without any comprehension of the final product they were contributing to.

This deliberate lack of vertical integration prevents workers from understanding their role within the broader purpose, contributing to the system's inherent absurdity and fostering a sense of bewilderment.

The Experience of the Severed Worker

The experience of the severed worker within Lumen is characterised by extreme isolation and manipulation.

Subjects of Experimentation:

Innies are likened to miners toiling deep within a cave, extracting valuable commodities from which they themselves will derive no benefit. More critically, they function as subjects of an experiment, akin to a rat navigating a maze to obtain cheese.

The rat, despite its relentless efforts, remains oblivious to the experiment's true purpose, which is determined by the external observer who designed the maze. The rat's goal of obtaining cheese is merely a proximate objective, distinct from the experimenter's overarching design.

This analogy highlights the inherent meaninglessness of the innies' tasks from their limited perspective, as their true function serves an unknown, external agenda.

Petty Privileges and Proximate Goals:

The rewards offered to severed workers for achieving their objectives, such as "watermelon parties," "Chinese finger traps," and "pens and do-dads," are presented as arbitrary and insignificant. When viewed from the external, integrated perspective of the outie, these petty privileges appear utterly ridiculous and un-motivating.

However, the narrative suggests these trivial incentives are an image of the non-integrated goals and perks pursued in the outside world, such as acquiring a new car or an expensive watch. From a higher, more integrated viewpoint—rooted in concepts of love or transcendentals—many worldly pursuits are equally proximate and lack ultimate significance, much like the inconsequential rewards offered to the innies.

Isolation and Hostile Competition:

Within Lumen, severed workers are deliberately isolated from other departments. They are often forced into hostile competitions with other teams, who are themselves engaged in similarly absurd and incomprehensible tasks.

This strategy exemplifies a "divide and conquer" approach, employed by what is depicted as an "evil empire". By preventing fragmented groups from uniting and integrating, the tyrannical hierarchy maintains control.

This deliberate fostering of competition between levels of a hierarchy represents a disordered state, contrasting with the natural unity and love that should inherently connect different aspects of a well-ordered system.

Consequences of Fragmentation and Dysfunction

The fundamental problem arising from the deliberate isolation of parts from themselves and from the whole is an inevitable backfire. When components of a system are dispossessed of knowledge regarding their connection to the overarching purpose, they invariably begin to compete amongst themselves, rebel against the whole, and ultimately destabilise the system.

Psychological and Organisational Parallels:

• Individual Psyche:

This dynamic is directly mirrored in the human psyche. If an individual permits actions in their life that are disconnected from their being's full purpose, a fragmented psyche emerges. These isolated actions and desires will then compete for resources, leading to internal conflict and dysfunction.

• Organisational Structure:

Similarly, in an organisation, if a department or agency becomes isolated from the larger system and develops its own independent intentions, it transforms into a "parasite". Such entities drain resources from the whole, failing to align with the organisation's broader objectives, thus jeopardising its integrity. This kind of tyranny, based on separation and disunity, is inherently unstable and perpetually susceptible to breakdown.

Innie-Outie Conflict and Dysfunctional Hierarchy:

The severed characters exemplify this systemic dysfunction. Because the innies have lost all memory and connection to their outies (their wholeness), their fragmented interests inevitably begin to clash with the interests of their complete being. This leads to overt competition between the two aspects of the same person.

• Helly's Case: In Helly's experience, her innie overtly expresses hatred and jealousy towards her outie, while the outie attempts to exert dominance or "infiltrate" the innie's existence. Statements such as "I am a person, you are not" epitomise this profound dysfunction of hierarchy.

• Dylan's Case: Dylan's fragmented innie develops an affection for his outie's wife, creating a situation of internal competition.

Mark's Personal Journey and Gemma's Plight

Mark's story is presented as a microcosm of the entire severance phenomenon, with the origin of his severance rooted in a prior, fractal fragmentation.

Mark's Work and Its Torturous Impact:

Within Lumen, Mark's assigned task is "macro data refinement," an activity that involves taking something whole ("macro") and breaking it down into particular elements. This work, a microcosm of the broader severance narrative, inadvertently amplifies the very fragmentation that initiated Mark's own severance: the division within his marital union.

Unbeknownst to his innie, Mark's daily work of sorting numbers into various boxes serves to increase the severance of his wife, Gemma, effectively torturing her by splintering her into increasingly absurd and fragmented iterations of human behaviour.

Gemma's "Hell":

It is revealed that Gemma was taken into Lumen on the night she died, descending to a lower, torturous level, akin to a rung of hell.

Unlike the other severed individuals, Gemma's innie is also her outie, meaning she has no external life; she is entirely imprisoned within Lumen. Both her innie and outie are completely fragmented, rendering her existence a literal form of torture.

Her torture involves a descent into extreme idiosyncrasy, where isolated aspects of human behaviour become her entire existence. For instance, one of her 25 sub-personalities is condemned to perpetually attend and re-attend dental appointments. Another persona endlessly writes Christmas cards, a task that constitutes her entire existence.

Mark's Attempt at Reintegration:

Upon discovering that Gemma is alive but trapped in this state, Mark's outie determines to go down in hell to save her, aiming to restore her to fullness and integrate her fragmented self. This act is also an attempt by Mark to integrate his own psyche, uniting his innie and outie, and to re-establish the marital union that was lost and precipitated his severance.

The Symbolism of the Crib: The ultimate image of fragmentation and torture for Gemma is the task of disassembling a baby's crib. This act brings her full circle to the original trauma that initiated the severance for Mark: their inability to conceive a child, which represented a higher form of unity they could not achieve. This disassembling of the crib signifies the "final hell," a definitive act of deconstruction intended to annihilate Gemma's existence.

Mark's Innie's Choice: Mark, as his outie, parallels the mythical figure of Orpheus, descending into a metaphorical Hades to retrieve his wife. However, Mark's innie, privy only to its fragmented experience and immediate desires, makes an opposing choice: to remain in "hell" with his innie love, Helly (referred to as "Helena" in this context). This choice, though seemingly absurd and impossible to the outie, is understandable from the innie's perspective, as it perceives no reason to act in defence of the person who imprisoned it in this predicament. The exact identity of Helly (whether outie or innie) at certain points in the narrative remains ambiguous, further blurring the lines of fragmented identity.

Broader Interpretations and Philosophical Themes

The narrative of Severance delves into several profound philosophical and societal critiques.

The Outie as Baggage and the Chance for Reinvention:

The hierarchical presentation of the outie is not exclusively positive; it can also be seen as representing a burdensome past or an "accumulation of sin" that weighs heavily upon an individual.

Severance, in this interpretation, becomes a mechanism for reinvention or the rediscovery of innocence, a means to cut off the old and start a new story. This concept is likened to common life transitions such as moving to a new city, forming new friendships, starting a new job, or beginning a new relationship.

It also parallels biblical imagery of crossing the sea or going through a flood, symbolising a break from a corrupt past (like Pharaoh's tyranny) and entry into a new existence, akin to baptism.

Anti-Hierarchy and Revolution:

Despite its exploration of hierarchical dysfunction, the story contains a pervasive anti-hierarchy theme, a characteristic often found in modern narratives.

The innies are consistently portrayed as slaves, implying that their eventual revolt against their outies or against Lumen is an expected and perhaps ideal outcome. This perspective aligns with an Atheist or reductionist vision where revolution is presented as the ultimate solution.

Critique of Religion and Control:

The pervasive veneration of Kier within Lumen—manifested through art, literature, and dedicated museums—is depicted as a tool of cynical control, an "opium of the masses".

Ritualisation throughout the series is portrayed as a false semity, characterised by mechanical procedures, an obsession with detail, and even a cultish goat sacrifice aspect. This religious imagery is consistently presented as dark, perverted, and far from a positive representation of genuine religious experience.

Gnostic Structure and The Matrix Analogy:

The narrative's overarching structure is described as Gnostic. In this framework, the world's leaders ("archons") are depicted as twisted figures, and reality itself is perceived as a prison or a form of hell, an "illusion" that lacks true enlightenment.

The severed workers (innies) are analogous to "batteries," providing essential financial resources and energy for the continued existence of their "higher selves" (outies).

However, because the innies are not integrated into the outies' purposes, they inevitably seek freedom, engage in competition, desire revolt, and aspire to escape the tyranny that stems from a fundamental lack of love and the lack of integration across the different levels of being.