Do not be alarmed. A minority of you get Apple TV, and a subset of that group watches the television series Severance. This post doesn’t require knowledge or even interest in the show, but the show’s conceit is the basis for what I have to say.
The premise of the show is that a small number of people have consented to a medical procedure on their brain which allows a corporation to employ them during the day, and during that workday, they will have absolutely no knowledge of their lives, memories, or families outside the workplace. Even though there may be a single human being, there are two human experiences: the “innie” who is the worker and the “outie” who is the person outside the confines of the office.
The transformation from innie to outie takes place during the short elevator ride to the “severed floor”, where all these special workers are located. During the elevator ride, the employee makes a bit of a funny face, is a little bit distorted, and voila, they are transformed. The entire representation reminds me of a kids’ show from my childhood, Big John, Little John, which apparently involved a lot of blinking.
As opposed as I have been to watching any kind of television since I was a kid, I’ve been starting to break down lately, since the empty nest provides an abundance of time that cannot all be deployed on Slope. Thus, we’ve found ourselves starting to watch programs like The Pitt, Prime Target, and Severance.
What I find especially intriguing about the show is how curious the innies are about their outies (excuse the silly terms, but this is what we have to work with). For an innie,it’s as if they were newborn. They still have their innate knowledge, intelligence, and physical characteristics, but all the other components of their life, such as where they grew up, where they went to school, whether or not they are married, whether or not they have kids, is all a complete mystery. They are aware that they HAVE an outie, and that their outie selves lives their life fully aware of the curious configuration of their work life, but that’s where their knowledge ends.
In the show, any information about their outie selves is strictly forbidden, because it corrupts the configuration of the cleaving of their work and home lives. Over time, however, bits of information do become known, and the more the innies find out, the more insatiable they become about learning more.
Whenever the innies have the chance to hear anything at all about their outie selves, they are absolutely captivated. They hang on to every word, because nothing is more interesting to a person than themselves, and we know there is a huge part of ourselves which is real and yet unknowable, we become obsessed with the mystery. The company wants their employees to be content, so in the few instances it does share descriptions of their outie selves, it is done with a very positive spin, which absolutely delights the listener, because they are relieved and overjoyed to know that their core essence is decent and noble, whether inside or out.
In one recent episode, a character named Dylan is granted an 18-minute visit with his outie wife (who herself is not severed and thus is all too aware of her husband and his history). This visitation takes place on the corporate headquarters in a private room, and Dylan feels excited but very awkward to “meet” for the first time the woman whom he is told is his wife. She informs him that they had three children together, and he is thrilled to look at a picture of the entire family, himself included, and he likewise is seeing his young children for the first time, as far as he knows.
There’s one particular bit of dialog between Dylan and his wife Gretchen which I cannot find anywhere, so I’m going to VERY much paraphrase it right here.
DYLAN: Have I always been at this job?
GRETCHEN: You were for a while, but you were laid off for three months before they took you back.
DYLAN: Why? Am I dumb?
GRETCHEN: No.
DYLAN: Am I lazy?
GRETCHEN: No. No, nothing like that. You……..you just have trouble finding your niche.
DYLAN: {pause} So, I’m a fuck-up.
As a person who spends far too much time alone and thinking about myself, I often have the sense that there is a superego Tim judging the everyday Tim, and he’s not at all a kind judge. The difference, of course, is that both Tims know the same stuff, whereas in the above-described scene, Dylan genuinely knows nothing about his outside life, and based on a tiny bit of information provided about someone who might as well be a third party altogether, he decides the guy – – himself – – kind of sucks.
As Gretchen leaves, “I’ll be good,” Dylan tells her. “I’ll make you all proud.”
“I’m always proud of you, Dylan,” she replies. They embrace. “I love you,” she says. “Oh…” he says, clearly not sure what to say.
Since most of my ruminations invariably drift toward the metaphysical, there’s another aspect to this conversation. There are those who believe that spirits are fixed and human experiences are transient. That is to say, a given spirit will inhabit a series of human lives throughout time, hopefully gaining wisdom along the way. I am increasingly of this opinion, and it ties in nicely to the concept of one self learning about, judging, and reflecting upon another self, even though that other is still them.
Let’s assume that you, yes you, are a spirit that’s tens or even hundreds of thousands of years old, and you’ve lived many lives, none of which you are aware. And yet that contiguous spirit is threaded through all those lives. Wouldn’t you be mesmerized to learn about them? It’s egotistical, partly, but it’s also an innocent curiosity, because I strongly suspect you want to know, in a manner of speaking, what you’re made of. If it really is “you”, then a deep understanding of how whatever it is “you” are lived out the past few thousand years would be endlessly fascinating.
Perhaps that’s just one reason we shouldn’t be able to know such things; because the ability to do so would make us like a Narcissus standing between two mirrors, endlessly staring at what seem like the infinite reflections of our lives and trying to untangle what it is that really constitutes whatever it is that’s called………you.
