Severance and the Horrors of Corporate Culture
Severance captivated audiences with its eerie metaphor about splitting your brain between a “work” self and a “life” self. But what if this sci-fi dystopia isn’t so different from our own world? And what if taking a closer look at the corporate world of Lumon can actually tell us a lot about what it means to be a worker today? Let’s explore in this deep dive into season one of Severance.
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=== Watch More Episodes! ===
The Substance: What’s the Point? ► https://youtu.be/UImWmcMtit4
Hollywood’s Fake War on Capitalism ► https://youtu.be/294qm3oV60s?si=0MXCjk1IQYOSeN_b
How Cars (2006) Explains the Collapse of American Society ► https://youtu.be/SHQt84xqEyw
Written and Hosted by Michael Burns
Directed by Michael Luxemburg
Edited by Henry Arrambide
Produced by Olivia Redden
Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound
#severance #tv #philosophy
© 2024 Wisecrack / Omnia Media, Inc. / Enthusiast Gaming
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what's his face, i love him. you can see he loves words just like he loves art. that damn corporate cult sht is the only lit he's ever seen and it takes on the significance of the bible, both to him and burt. it's so hilarious, that poorly written dreck ricken authored is the only other writing they're exposed to and the basic things they had not heard are so transformational to all of them, except maybe helly. i'm not sure she saw it, and she was already there
plus look to those 4 humours or whatever keir named them, obvi each office mate represents them and so will the different ways you can feel about groups of numbers
i seen this one cartoon recently. i think it was called carol at the end of the world. the world is ending, people are bucket listing, but craving normality, carol walks into an office and satarts working, along with several other people who don't even know what they're working on. it's simply the only way they know to cope. there was only one season when i watched it, but there may be more at some point as the world had not yet ended. might be a good companion piece, like that time i binged watamo and honda kuun back to back and practically had to call 988 by the end of it, lol
so which one of em is the girl from nightmare on elm st 3&4 and the gf in little nicky? the white haired woman? alos, is she the president of district 13? i know i should knosw this since that's the district i live in, but since it's not real i get a pass on that, right?
some real banality of evil type sht, whatever those numbers are
maybe how we as citizens and consumers can separate the violence inherent in the system from the results upon which we believe we are dependent
they threw me out of school. sent me to a school for bad kids. there was an "interval tape" it beeped randomly, a second teacher would judge if we were paying attention and award between 1 and 10 for each. you needed a certain number for a break and could use points to buy bs rewards at the end of the day
17:45……Thats what severance and the film "the substance" connects with another: adaption of consciouse-state and mode or even a certain "identity" for the purpose.
In Severance, they are watched by their own mind-set/formed identity, that has an even more insinuate scenario in it, just as The substance seemed to try suggest (or it could be focussed out of): that your daughter will suck the mothers life of to be able to exist at all…and the more life of the mother gets sucked, the nearer to death the mother will get….
To prevent that from happen in the "work-place scenario" in Severance, where they had to adopt the identity of a not seen management-identity, they need to get opressed…and yes, every worker is part of that opression, but that is only typical mechanism to hold up the system, just, like it is in bee- or ant-colonys or almost every other species living in such colonys.
As we know, it also seems to work for humans as a species….nearly the same way…or simply exactly the same….
In nature, only the strongest, fittest and luckiest "alpha" will survive. In those colonizing-species, its in principle the same. The life-cycle of a bee-colony is one year/season, but only the queen-bee is existing over the almost whole life-cycle, the worker bee´s die within some weeks. And: They die, because of experience, and becoming rebellish, so that the queens consciousenes does not controll the worker-bee´s motivation anymore, what leads to a problem for the worker bee, because without that part of her consciouseness, the worker-bee does not know anything about surviving in "freedom" anymore, so she dies from many failed decissions in her "free life"…. and the sanctions of the queens consciouseness in connection with the younger work-bee´s, who build together a special interconnected consciosuenes, that is able to kill the outgrown/rebelling worker-bee by degenerating their brains…. whilest trying to get them back into the mind of the colony…
Thats, what Roger Penrose probably gets wrong, if he explaines, that the collabs of wave-function/the disconnection of consciouseness does produce consciouseness, when consciousenes is build on this interconection between brains and identitys. What he explaines, is the proces/mechanism, that, when you degenerate parts of youridentity (in other humans), you get more consciousenes and more freedom in your own brain, what then leads to more controlled consciosuenes.
Degenerating brain-structure is working, because every human individual tries to get stable mind-sets and occupies brainstructure/networks for that target (if he can/is able to). You also could simply kill those humans, who occupy to much of brain-structure for their controll of consciouseness. But, that has the problem, that the other interconnected individuals may get a bit more souvereignity over their consciouseness, but they also will age, because its not only the consciouseness, that is changing, because "life" is a complex interacting phenomen, that cannot renounce on maximum interconnection, because that interconnection is also life-potencial and force. Cutting of interconnections (by degenerating brains, because the interconnection as a wave-function is a stable condition, not a instable one….entanglement is constant, not temproary – so you need to destroy braincells to cut off the entanglement – and thats, what happend, if a worker-bee developes to far out of the colonies mind-structure and nivellated neccessity).
Penroses scenario (collabs of wave-function for becoming consciouse) is sort of true, but the disconnection of entanglement does not happen not in his brain – rather in others brain – in the best scenario by switching between brain-networks within a brain (what does not disconnect the entanglement) or at worst by degenerating brain-cells and then disconnecting the entanglement by disintegration of organic actors (braincells). What tells us, that entanglements are not the exception, they are the normality and in principle constant… existing forever. Its not the scenario of entangled photons, because a brain isn´t constructed out of photons, rather out of atoms. Subatomar particles can´t hold up their entanglement constantly, because macro-physical forces are way to potent for that. But in brains, all is build from atoms, and atoms hold up their physical attributes for ever until they decomsose (what they do only in very energetic proccesses and for that, not often and very likely enough for the scenario of our brains and existance on earth).
And that Life-transfer from old to young… is also the main thing in christianity…albeit is does not happend between mother and daughter/father and son (of course it happends also this way), but the main target and culprit is the son of god, who first got assimilated and then, if he doesn´t do his duty (in the benefit of christian idea) anymore, he also got sucket out his life-potence and force…piece for piece. But because he is "gods son", it is a scenario of a diferent branche of humanoid….another haplogroup, or another interconnection between "mindfull" or intelligent creatures…
Probably, if a "jesus" get cruzified, he, as the last of his family, may will die or, he goes over to this other, actually dominating haplogroup, what seems to be a real epigenetical mutation, what a creature cannot cope with it very easy, execpt he is young and fit and healthy….but, Jesus of nazareth was over 40 or so? He did probably not "resurrect" from the death of his familiar line into another line. The adoption of a new "family" is a hard thing, only very young identitys (or small identitys) can survive. So christian main ideology is about killing "the other family" to get their "identity" and vitality and life-potence/force…. but its not explained in that way, rather in a encrypted way…with strange analogys and completely diferent terms and meanings about whats going on and what it is all about.
And one of the analogys to "jesus" in the bibel/holy texts is the main opressed entity in the Story "The one, who run away from the omelas". The modern Jesus, who supports meaning and motivation (and happyness) in a community. And he can get formed, because he is..firstly, always known who he is….and got opressed and manipulated and formed into what they mean, is benefitital for the community. This guys restricted developement secures the "freedom" of the individuals in the community, and it gives them the motivation to be happy and to have something to strive for (almost always without to suffer from to much striving, because…. suffering is outsourced to that one guy isolated in the room. The story gvoes, that this one guy is locked up in that room ever since, and that implicateds, that he does not have any usual social interaction, what results in a retardet identity without worldly suffering and problems in life, so all the suffering in real life cannot trigger suffering in that guy, because he do not know, what this feeling is about…so its only a feeling, that does not mean to him…
Looks like, this guy is the only one, who does not suffer, because he didn´t know anything diferent and his situationis normal for him, so he does not suffer, but gets melancholic or something…He in his very special build mind, is the foundation for all minds/identitys build on top of this guys identity….his representation of being and eperiencing existance is very much diferent, as for all others. Becuase of lack of real consciouse feelings of suffering, he spends ideal for foundation of build up identitys on.
It is interesting that this “short story” got awards – by culture and society. A kind of “homage”, similar to what the Bible receives all the time…i mean, not in real awards, rather in praisings and canonization… Awards are the secular variants of praisings and canonization. And so the nameless guy isolated and jailed in the room, is the secular equivalent of the biblical "son of god" (were Jesus is only an expamplification of what realy happend).
And on top: its not that one guy "jesus", who once get sacrificed by all others/populations/societys, its several up to hundrets in every societal generation, who got sacrificed without it notizing as that. Because they name/explain those fates with other circumstances. What is usualy under the praxis of "reductionism"…reducing the event on the minimalst factor, that then does not tell a storyx about the implementation in the reality of all humans (or like in physics or medicine: the whole interaction between the reduced event and the rest of organic dynamics and mechanisms). Anyway, all those sacrifizings aren´t as specific, as the bibel traditioned about jesus…so…. nothing to complain about, because, they weren´t jesus at all, because… jesus is only that one identity? No.
And Youtube gives me sometimes strange suggestions… Videos like "Relax" from Frankie goes to Hollywood or "Best be believing"… and "legendary Melodys" in extendet videos (several hours) if something happend.
And: just, as god got killed enough, they now can make a agreement with "hamas" and about palestine and Gaza…. because it wasn´t about a problematical teritorial conflict or such, it was about killing god all the time, as we got forced into a "war against terrorism". So, god is the main terrorist? Gods spirit is terror?
idk, can i trade you a story? or when i get my bucket potatoes going?
professional mental patient, made it up myself, but it is what i get paid for
man, that's sad your job is taking all the fun out of just viewing the things you watch critically. for me scrutinizing stuff is enjoyable. it's not "nitpicking" it's deep appreciation. i never thought about it from your point of view. it's like that joke about the gynocologist going home to his wife and so forth
thank you. this show was so good, and i guess i binged s 1 at the exact right time
So hyped for the second season of this show
There is no "who you really are"
I saw that Ben stiller and Adam Scott had an official severance podcast and I tried to listen to it, I kid you not their podcast is sponsored by a company that "helps to increase productivity for offices". It's a level of irony I can't comprehend.
And the fact that severance is made for Apple TV… If you've ever worked at apple you'll know how ridiculous it is.
it wasn't discussed here but it does beg the question: if you have no memories of yourself outside the office & vice versa, can your innie & outie even be considered the same person? it's somewhat similar to the ship of theseus paradox
Great video but your lava lamp is frozen. Why is that so? I never owned one so am unaware of the intricacies of lava lamps.
good video! i can't finish it, i wanna watch the show now lol
I got an add for Miller (it’s the champagne of beers) that was riffing on “the case of the Mondays”. Thought that was funny.
You know what an interesting episode would be? Exploring the tension between solidarity and tribalism. It seems to me that the benefits of effective solidarity are obvious, but it's really easy to see the harm of tribalism. I'm not sure I can easily distinguish the difference between the two, excepting that what I call solidarity leads to outcomes I prefer, and tribalism doesn't. I think this would be an excellent use of a big ole philosophy brain!
Side note, I'm convinced that everyone, some subconsciously, some loudly and explicitly, want a John Turturro/Christopher Walken romance. I assume that lack of interest in such a romance would be predictive of psychopathy.
Happy to have Wisecrack2 and finally season 2 is here! I do not have a cabin and my fake job name was Event Data Management
This show is literally the scariest thing I’ve ever seen. Horror shit never scares me, but the thought of your entire life being nothing but never-ending, empty, monotonous, meaningless work and superficial small talk filled me with true, existential terror.
SEVERANCE is meta about how dreams and memories cross pollinate in the subjects memory,not knowing whether a memory is a dream…
Think about it: when you fall asleep, does your dreamer know you’re lying down in a bed somewhere?
Wild to get a Tony Robbins ad in the middle of this
Inresent your comments on rickons book. Bullies are bulls and lies.
Innies. Workers with zero rights, that’s why it’s so satisfying and exciting to see them fight back at the end of series one.
Andor gave me a similar feeling and why I love them both
It’s also hilarious the makers of the show and actors do not talk about this at all 🤣🤣🤣
i get the point of severance but like they are doing pointless meaningless nothing work. it makes sense if they were like cia operatives or high tech working on something top secret and needed to be severed so their outie could not be compromised for information