Member-only story
Like all stories.
At first watch, it appears that the hit Apple TV show Severance is about the literal separation of home life and work life. At first thought, the idea is intriguing. If you have a memory so painful you’ll do anything to avoid it for a little while, like Mark S., inserting a chip into your head that allows this escape seems like a good deal. For eight hours (or however many the Macrodata Refinement team works), Mark’s wife isn’t dead. She doesn’t even exist in his mind. And one can see how that circumstance would be welcome over the alternative of crippling, constant grief.
I can see why one would want to do this even beyond extreme cases. Severed employees don’t bring home any of the crap they might deal with at work. Nor do they take any of the crap from their personal lives to their jobs. Dylan G. doesn’t have to know his home life is quite uninspired despite having a wife and three children. Irving B. doesn’t have to know he’s so utterly alone. The severed worker and the person they are in the world are two separate identities. The “innie” quite literally has no clue what the “outie” is doing or has done, and vice versa.
It’s quite the experiment.
Severance is about the nuances of such a separation, positive and negative. But not really. It’s about this only as a means…
