That Hideous Severance
The second season of Apple TV’s phenomenal hit Severance has held many surprises, but the biggest may be its growing similarities to a dystopianesque novel by C.S. Lewis. Will this season end more or less like that book? With less than a week to go before the season two finale, I’ll risk a guess. But first, a refresher.
Warning: Spoilers galore.
Background
Season one of the mind-bending psychological thriller/mystery/dystopian/alternate-reality drama opened in 2022 with a simple but compelling premise: an international corporation had invented a brain implant that severed a person’s work memories and consciousness from his home memories and consciousness, allowing its “severed” employees to enjoy lives free of office drudgery but dooming their work selves to know nothing else until the “outies,” as the outside selves are known, retire and their work-only “innies” wink out of existence.
What would happen to a self split in half in such a way could itself have provided more than enough material for an interesting series. But viewers soon find that something more sinister than morally ambiguous brain surgery is going on at Lumon Industries. The severed employees work on an isolated, underground floor, kept under constant watch, doing jobs that make no sense while earning incentives (pencil erasers, finger traps) of no value.
Exactly what Lumon does isn’t clear. Nor are the cultish religious and health beliefs of its owners and workers. Seemingly a fictional mash-up of typically quirky American religious movements such as Mormonism or Scientology and of companies affiliated with stringent but also typically American religious and health practices like Kellogg’s or Amway, the show’s mysterious company is the creation of equally mysterious founder Kier Eagan, whose face adorns every office like a crucifix in a Catholic hospital and whose writings employees study as if reading the Bible.
Kier’s key spiritual teaching seems to be that every soul is a mixture of four temperaments—malice, frolic, woe,
Article from LewRockwell
LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
