Severance Is Darn Good Scifilosophy

Severance dazzles. Who would have expected a horror/sci-fi/philosophy gem from Ben Stiller? This is the best sci-fi TV dealing with the topic of personal identity since Travelers; and Travelers may have been the best ever, and Severance might be better still.

No, you shouldn't actually watch it--most of you. There are endless F-words, a couple of fornication scenes to fast-forward through, and . . . horror. This show is dark, not least because of the awful bright dystopian fluorescent lighting on the Severed Floor of the Lumon building. It's lighting that only highlights the horrific handling of the employees on that floor. This is 1984-level stuff. And something even worse is happening on the mysterious floor below it.

But the philosophy shines like it should--like good, wholesome afternoon sunlight.

So what's going on in this story, and why is it so philosophical? Well, the evil Lumon Corporation has technology for partitioning memory. The result is that, once you have that nightmare device in your head, you forget your whole life when you enter the Severed Floor. You still remember the names of American states, and you know how to speak. But you don't know who you are--not even a name.

And when you exit the Severed Floor, you forget everything that happened there. The result is two completely non-overlapping sets of memories. Two completely separate lives taking turns with the same body.

Lumon shows you a video of your first day on the job, testifying that you freely agreed to this. And, if Lumon cooperates, sometimes you can send more messages to your other half through them.

But communicating with yourself is virtually impossible otherwise. There’s another sci-fi gimmick that makes the story work: Lumon has code detectors. You can't carry a note to yourself. You can't write on your hand. You can't even stare at letters in front of a bright light right before you enter the elevator: They flash it out of your retinas on the way in. Mark stops Helly before she gets in trouble, writing different halves of letters on different arms or swallowing a message. But Mark isn't in time to stop poor Helly's more desperate efforts to send messages to herself outside of work. These are painful to watch.

That's where things begin; that's the predicament for the Innies--the work selves. And things aren't great for the Outies--the outside-work selves. They aren't suffering like the Innies, but they're just as much deceived and powerless to connect to their other halves.

But, of course, a good story will have options: There will be some way to reintegrate your mind, or some other gimmicks--some way to fight back and maybe some hope of beating the system. Of course, it'll take some serious teamwork and heroics.

And in the meantime the characters wonder what philosophers wonder: Who am I? What makes me me? What makes some person at noon the same person as me at 6 in the morning? Hat-tip to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on personal identity by Eric T. Olson for introducing the whole massive topic of personal identity. And it is massive--a vast array of interrelated questions, arguments, and theories.

Severance zooms in on one question: If two completely different sets of memories share my brain and body, am I really two different people?

The characters often answer, with little consistency: Of course I'm not that person; she's a total jerk, and I'm not. Of course you two are the same; when I met both of you, I couldn't even tell you apart.

John Locke says, yes--there are two people there. Some Lutherans in Season 2 agree, and they specifically give a Lockean view on the subject: Innies and Outies get separate divine judgments after they die! (Hat-tip to William Uzgalis, author of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on John Locke, for a relevant supplementary document on Locke's philosophy of mind.)

Actually, Severance is only dramatizing an idea Locke came up with first. If you go to the Gutenberg.org edition of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke says:

Nothing but consciousness can unite remote existences into the same person: the identity of substance will not do it; for whatever substance there is, however framed, without consciousness there is no person . . . .

Could we suppose two distinct incommunicable consciousnesses acting the same body, the one constantly by day, the other by night; . . . I ask . . . whether the day- and the night-man would not be two as distinct persons as Socrates and Plato?

I don't think the show itself is trying to give us the same answer to this question. Locke's view is one many characters accept—or at least seem to accept sometimes—but there's always some pushback against it or some other reason to reconsider. If they're different people, why does an Outie's wife matter to his Innie? Doesn't it matter that an Innie feels the sadness of his Outie's grieving even if he doesn't remember why? If they comb their hair the same way and laugh at the same kind of jokes, is that a clue that they are the same person? If they can be reintegrated and be one person next week--someone who's the same person as the Innie was this week and the same person as the Outie was this week--aren't they also the same person this week?

Severance gives us the question, leaving us to make our own arguments and render our own judgments.

But Severance does answer another question: Are Innies people?

Heck yeah, they are.

That's why the severance procedure is evil. It's not just that Lumon is creepy and weird. (So, so weird--why is there a goat farm on the Severed Floor? Why are some of the numbers on the computer screens scary?)

The thing is--people just shouldn't live like this. Innies never see the outside world; their life experience is getting into the elevator to leave work, and then getting off again immediately the next morning--an endless repetition with no break. If they're different people from their Outies, that's cruel. And if they're the same people, it's still wrong to live half your life not being able to remember things from the other half--sunsets, wind, trees, a good book, your wife, your kids. People should live integrated lives: Don't live like you're one person at work and another at home, or one person on Sunday and another on weekdays. Mark should have grieved his wife full-time--not cut himself in two so part of him wouldn't be able to remember.

If the Innies are the same people as their Outies, severance is self-abuse. And if they're different people, the Innies are slaves. (Helly's Outie is the worst, sending her Innie a message informing her that she's not a person.) A few kindness reforms in Season 2 do not amount to giving the Innies full human lives. It's hard to imagine how any severance reform would be able to respect the rights of Innies without completely undoing the purposes for which they were created in the first place.

The Season 2 finale drops on Friday. Wishing you the best of luck, Helly R.! And you, Dylan. And especially you, O character-with-a-name-withheld-because-some-spoilers-are-just-too-much. And much luck to Mark and Devon—trust each other, trust yourself, and don't trust that evil woman on the second floor of the cabin!

Finally, a hat-tip to Sci-Phi Journal for nudging me towards the neologism in my title.