Speaker 1: And so from the larger frame, it's really fascinating because
I don't think I've ever seen a series or a
story where the absurdity of what you're noticing is entertaining,
you know, because absurdity can be funny and entertaining, But
it's also completely reasonable from the larger frame, because we
the viewer are meant to experience the severance ourselves, right,
And so we're watching this and we're experiencing a kind
of disconnection and confusion, right, but also wonder.
Speaker 2: This is Jonathan Peshel, Welcome to the symbolic world.
Speaker 1: For quite a while now, several people that I know
and trust and like have been encouraging me to watch
the show Severance. And at first, when people presented the
concept to me, which is basically the idea that, like
in a science fiction world, people are able to sever
themselves between their work personona and the rest of their life,
and the people in the work persona don't know and
don't remember the rest of their life, and the people
in the rest of the life don't know and don't
have any memories or connection to their persona. And at
first I thought, what a strange idea for a show.
I don't know why that would be interesting, but after
much insistence, I decided to watch it and realize that
it is actually a really wonderful exploration of how identity functions,
you know, and how identities hierarchies work, especially how what
happens when a hierarchy becomes dysfunctional, and happens when there
is a break between the different levels of a hierarchy
of a system, both in terms of a social system,
but obviously the hierarchy that also exists within us. The
first thing to say, which I was really surprised to
see that this show came out and it was filmed
during COVID. It came out what in twenty twenty two,
I guess, And it's just very odd to watch a
show that was filmed during COVID be about a biotech
technology that secretly controls your narrative and isolates you from
you know, you're the full story and the meaning of life.
And it's just very odd to realize that this was
filmed during COVID. And I wonder if the people who
are wearing masks and doing all of this distancing during
COVID realized that they were participating in a form of
separance while they were making it, you know, not sure.
And so the main care is Mark, and we're going
to try to follow his story, mostly because we could
kind of follow different threads. But I think that you know,
he of course, because he's the main character. He is
a microcosm of the whole question of severance. And it's
very interesting to see that, you know, the severance starts
even before the severance in the brain, right. And so
the reason why Mark is performing this severance in his
life is because his wife died. He had a kind
of trauma which broke away his marriage or think of
the marriage as the union of two people together in
one forming one body. And so he's severed from his wife,
his wife dies, and then because of that, he can't
keep his own life together. You know, his work life
is falling apart because he's drinking, and so finally he
decides to sever himself in order to be able to continue.
And so you can already see it like a process
of fragmentation. And interestingly enough, in the second season you
find out that the severance had.
Speaker 2: Started even before that.
Speaker 1: Because one of the things that led to all of
this is that Mark and his white Gemma, they were
trying to have a child, and so they were really
trying to express their unity in the formation of a family,
which would would be an even higher unity, right, which
would be this one in many, that this dance of
one in many that exists beyond the individual.
Speaker 2: But they're not able to do that.
Speaker 1: And it's in that moment that his wife dies and
that he decides to sever And so you can see
this kind of fragmentation of the person already in the
meta narrative, right, already in the narrative before the actual
science fiction things takes hold, you could say.
Speaker 2: And so you know, before we continue, you have to always.
Speaker 1: Kind of remember how it is that I described the world,
and you know what it is that we're talking about
when we say there's hierarchies, right, and so you kind
of have to understand that all of beings function as hierarchies,
and there are holes and there are parts, and those
parts also have holes, and therefore you keep going down.
You can go all the way down to you know,
to the atoms or to quantum field or whatever, but
even in a person, you know that's how it functions, right,
So you can imagine that also that these hierarchies that
are cascading next to each other, so not just one,
there are many. You can kind of follow the line
down different different hierarchies, and so you can think of yourself.
You let's say me, Jonathan, I'm the through line. Just
think of it that way. So there is a through
line in my life and in my experience, the aspect
of me that gathers the memories together and that creates
a story that makes me one person and not many people.
But then also inside me, you know, you have sub personalities,
You have different aspects of your personalities, and in that
you also have desires. And then there are thoughts and
all of these, you know, are multiple, and sometimes it
can kind of compete with each other. They can be
hostile to each other. Right, So sometimes you'll have thoughts
and you'll say, well, that's not me, right.
Speaker 2: You experience it as a temptation.
Speaker 1: So when you experience a thought as a temptation, there's
a sense in which in these in the things that
are happening inside you.
Speaker 2: You know, as you go down the.
Speaker 1: Hierarchy, some of these things are maybe competing with each other.
They don't know each other, and so you have to
integrate them into the through line and say no, I
won't do that, even though I thought about it, because
because that's not really part of me. It's not at
least the part of me that is the most integrated.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So this process happens, you know, in yourself in terms
of your psyche, but it also happens in yourself in
terms of let's say the same You have you, the
through line, the one who's acting, and then below that
you have your members, your arms, your legs, those that
follow your instructions. But you also have sell organs inside you,
and then those organs have subsystems, and then you have cells,
et cetera, et cetera. Right, And so that's just kind
of how the the.
Speaker 2: The body works.
Speaker 1: And you can experience severance, you know, in your life.
Speaker 2: You experience it actually more than you think.
Speaker 1: You can think about sin as a form of severance,
because sin is something like there's a little desire in
you or a thought in you that forgets its connection
to the whole right and forgets how what it's doing
will affect the whole of the of the person and
is willing to kind of engage in certain behaviors that
don't connect to the whole, and you do that obviously
usually for a limited time.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Imagine a sin in the in the series, you have
adultery as a good example. It's funny because in the
series it's not presented as a sin, but it isn't
all for all intents and purposes, a sin in the
series when Mark sleeps with Helly and the other Helly
and then all of that is kind of happening because
of the effects that it has. So think of someone
who commits adultery, right, that person all of a sudden
has a desire, has a kind of substructure of thoughts
and of desires and of intentions that sets itself up
and cares more about it to realizing its own goals
than the fullness of the person. And so cheating on
your spouse and then that causing all kinds of chaos
in the vertical alignment and the wholeness of the being.
Speaker 2: But you know, people do that all the time.
Speaker 1: People betray themselves, They do all these things where they
really are severed. They forget themselves, you know, And think
of the times I don't know that you lie to
impress someone It's like, what is happening in that moment
you kind of forget your the fullness of you, and
you're willing to lie and to pretend something and to
twist reality to get some little thing, like to convince
someone to do something to or to get some prestige
or whatever it is. That for the reason that you're lying,
and that is already a form of severance. And you
can think of it that happening in terms of mind
and body as well, when you have kind of things
popping up from below, hunger, sexual desire, all of these things,
these systems that are acting and then there's a disconnect
between what.
Speaker 2: You are, your through line and your body.
Speaker 1: You know, and that you know that how can you
say that that that is also an image of the
idea of severance. So before we go forward, I just
want to make a little announcement. You know, we are
preparing at the Symbolic World a symbolism masterclass, which is
really going to be the kind of culmination of all
the videos that I've been doing, like the five hundred
videos that I put up on YouTube since I started this.
I realized that people kind of drop in and out
and they'll catch a video, and sometimes they don't know
where to start, like where how of this all comes together.
So what we decided to do is put together a
you know, a what is it?
Speaker 2: How many are we're doing?
Speaker 1: We're doing like an eighteen hour, six class thing where
we're going to have two hours per class plus a
whole hour of Q and a really engaging so that
we're going to go through all the concepts. It's going
to be an introduction to symbolism, but not just an introduction.
We're going to dive in and go into the deep concepts.
And the purpose is that after this you can really
kind of have mastered symbolic thought. You know that you
have everything you need and you can look at the
world through the patterns you know, and you won't feel
like it's disjuncted. And so I'm really looking forward to
doing this because for me too, pulling all of this together,
I think will be a really fun thing to do.
So I hope to see you in that class, all right.
And so in the context of severance, it's important to
understand that the AUDI, right, is that integrated one. Why
because the AUDI is the one that decides the idea,
is the one that decides that the any exists, and
the AUDI is the ones that can decide that the
Ani no longer exists, right, because if they don't go
back to work, if they decide to make they can
make that aspect of themselves cease to exist by just
not by quitting or not going back to work. And
so there's a sense in which it's not just like
they're severed and they're equal. No, no, no, they're severed
really in a hierarchical fashion where you have the whole
being and then you have an aspect of the being
which is broken and cut off and then made to
live independently from the integrated uh being. And so the
any is like a prisoner of the decision of the AUDI.
But we'll see that because they're severed, that won't always
go the way the way it is. You think about
how this is the case in yourself. You have certain
internal systems, like you have desires for example. So you're
in theory the whole being, you have the power, you
have the desire. But if you're not careful and you
let these little aspects of yourself become independent and be
severed from the full being, that is when things run
into trouble. And you really see that happening in the series,
and so the can think of it as a kind
of alienation, right, where aspects of yourself are alienated from
the fullness of you. But you can also see it
as a social phenomena, of course, because the experience of
the any is of course to be alienated from any
type of higher participation. So what's amazing about the series
is that the severance happens at different levels simultaneously. So,
of course the severance is within the person, and the
hierarchy is presented within the person, but the severance is
also within the organization, and so the severed workers are also,
you know, just like in their own being, kind of
these isolated processes that function on their own and don't
have any connection to the integrated thing. This is what's happening,
of course in lumin itself, where the severed workers are
analogous to what's happening in their own being. So the
leaders of Luban, of course, are not severed. The people
that are running the show are not severed. They know
what's going on, they have a sense of everything that's happening,
but the workers are isolated from that purpose, right, and
they don't know what they're doing completely, and so the
image is very powerful, you know, and the company itself
is represented as this kind of contradiction of this severing.
You could think of it that way. The name itself, Luman,
seems to refer to light, right, the idea of luminary.
Speaker 2: Right, it referms to light.
Speaker 1: But their logo is a drop of water or a
drop of something. So you have this weird image almost
like in the name of the name, which refers to
something in heaven, but the logo which refers to the
image of earth or the image of water that is below.
And then you see that happening in all the aspects
of the company. You know, their logo, their their slogan
is united in severance, which is a kind of oxymoron.
Speaker 2: It's a contradiction.
Speaker 1: It's kind of funny because it reminds us of the
pronunciation of a certain Canadian Prime minister, the idea that
we don't have any identity except for openness, that we
that it's we only have diversity, right, Diversity is our identity,
Diversity is our strength, which is oddly similar to this
idea of united in severance.
Speaker 2: Right, It's like that it's a, it's a.
Speaker 1: It's a contradiction, but then absurdity itself becomes a tool
of severance, right, because we don't know what things mean,
you know, and the people that are there don't know
what it is that they're doing in the in the company.
And so the geography of lumin itself has kind of
two shapes. It's vertical, right, just like the idea you
could say, of the higher identity kind of being fragmented
down into the lower identities. But the architecture of lumin itself,
you know, there's an elevator that goes up and down,
so the full worker the audi appear, comes at the
top and then moves down into the basement where they
are fragmented and where they are severed they appear, and
then we find out at the end of season two
or in season two that there's an even deeper level
that's below the level that they are, where, for example,
the character Gemma, who is Mark's wife who thinks is dead,
is not severed into two but is actually severed into
twenty five sub.
Speaker 2: Personalities, you know.
Speaker 1: And then if there's like a horizontal aspect to the level,
so there's like a vertical where you go down to
be severed. But once you're in that level, then the
level itself, you know, is like a maze, and it's.
Speaker 2: Like a puzzle.
Speaker 1: It's it's forbidden to map the maze, right, it's for it's.
Speaker 2: Forbidden to fully understand it.
Speaker 1: And you could say that in some ways what they
want is for you to not understand what it is
that you're doing. And that's where the workers are doing
all these tasks which seeming completely absurd to themselves and
to us, and they only know is mysterious and important,
you know.
Speaker 2: And so this idea that.
Speaker 1: There is some kind of vertical integration, but we don't
know what it is.
Speaker 2: Right, it's something like a factory worker.
Speaker 1: Think of how how factory workers were described the beginning
of the of the modern age is being alienated, you know,
alienated because of the separation between work and life, but
also alienated because factory workers were just doing one little.
Speaker 2: Task and they didn't know what it is.
Speaker 1: They didn't have any participation in the fullness of the
product they were doing. Sometimes factory workers don't even know
what they're making. They're just making some plastic shape. They
have no sense of the final product. And that is
of course, the image of this kind of absurdity of
fragmented and isolated tasks, and so from the larger frame,
it's really fascinating because I don't think I've.
Speaker 2: Ever seen a series or a story.
Speaker 1: Where the absurdity of what you're noticing is entertaining, you know,
because absurdity can be funny and entertaining, but it's also
completely reasonable from the larger frame, because we the viewer
are meant to experience the severance ourselves, right, And so
we're watching this and we're experiencing it kind of disconnection
and confusion, right, but also wonder right, because the fragmentation
or the lack of unity is also a kind of puzzle,
you know.
Speaker 2: That's what a puzzle is.
Speaker 1: A puzzle is a bunch of stuff that doesn't have
vertical integration, right, that doesn't have identity. And so that's
why there's also in the contemplation of the absurdity of
the show, there's also a kind of wonder right, Like
you're trying to figure out find the treasure, You're trying
to figure out what is happening. And that's why the
story in Severance is much better than that series Lost
that came out what is it like around maybe two
thousand and two. I forget two thousand and three because
Loss tried to create a similar effect because the idea
of being severed and being lost are very close in
terms of the analogies. Right when you're lost means that
you don't know where you are and you're severed from
your final like your home and your final destination, and
being severed is something like that in terms of in
terms of analogy, what happened when you're watching Loss is
that you realize that the writers were as lost as
the people watching, and at some point, you know, really
everything was just going around in circle. You were just
like there was no way out of the maze. You
could say, there was no way to integrate. But in severance,
what's interesting is that the story itself offers the verticality
all through the story, where there is a sense where
you can perceive some of the vertical connection, whether it's
in the characters themselves, and then it's more difficult to
see it in lumen, but we're kind of starting to
see it, and so I think it makes the whole
strategy of using this kind of absurdity way more effective.
So the innis you know, they're the social aspect of it,
or let's say the corporate aspect of it, is that
the innis are representation of workers where they're kind of
like miners that are deep in a cave and they're
looking for precious things that they won't benefit from. Right.
But at the same time, what's interesting is that they're
also subject of an experiment, right, and they're being acted
upon by the hierarchy that they don't totally know. And
so there really are like a going through the maze,
you know, trying to get the cheese. But the rat
going through their maize trying to get the cheese doesn't
really know what the real purpose of the experiment is
because that purpose is outside of the maze, right. That
purpose is the person who designed the maize, who is
looking at it from the outside. Uh, And the purpose
is not to get the cheese. Right, So the rat
runs the maze over and over over and over over
and over, and although they get the cheese, I'll never
know why that they're running the they're running the maze,
you know. And that's why the imagery of the office
is so compelling. That character Dylan, for example, You know,
it's interesting to see that he's motivated by these work perks.
Is it the watermelon party, the Chinese finger traps and
pens and do dads or whatever little caricatures of himself
and these like petty privileges. And then but when we
look at them from the outside, you know, having the
whole story, these look completely ridiculou this and completely kind
of arbitrary and not not you know, not really.
Speaker 2: Very motivating until you realize, you know.
Speaker 1: That this is an image of all of our own
non integrated let's say, goals and perks, you know, the
idea of getting a brand new car or a nice watch,
you know, or all these other signs of prestige that
that really serve as very proximate goals. And if you
were able to scale yourself up a little and see
these these kind of motivations that we have from a
more integrated you know, from the point of view of
love or the point of view of the transcendentals, then
you would realize that a lot of the stuff we
chase after is pretty much the equivalent of what Dylan
is chasing after in the office. And so the severance
aspect of the story is represented in all levels in
their work. Of course, like I said, not knowing what
they're doing, not knowing where different things are. But also
they're isolated from the other groups, and they're put in
these hostile competitions with other teams in the company, and
those other teams are also performing these absurd tasks that
we also don't know what they are. But there's a
sense in which it really is this idea that hierarchy
in this sense is evil, is more like an evil
empire that is ruling over these broken, fragmented tribes. And
you know, it's like the divide and conquer idea that
if we keep these people away from each other, if
we prevent them from joining together and becoming one, you know,
that's the way that we will rule over them. So
you really have this conjunction of tyranny and fragmentation that
I've talked about in so many videos, you know, oppose
from the real way it works, which is the unity
and the love. You know, that is how things are
supposed to come together. So usually there's no competition between
the levels of a hierarchy. You know, the love for
your wife doesn't compete with your love for your state.
That should be ridiculous, you know, And it's only when
things are disordered that there appears to be competition between
the different levels. And so of course the problem though
is that if you try to isolate parts from themselves
and isolate parts from the whole, the vertical integration, then
that will ultimately backfire, you know, because once the parts
of something don't know why they're in the hole, then
that's what's going to happen. They're going to compete with
each other, they're going to compete with the whole.
Speaker 2: They're going to revolt. Right, think again of how sin functions.
Speaker 1: How in fact, if you have actions in your life
that don't know how they're connected to the full purpose
of your being, now you have a problem because now
they they'll take your resources, they'll compete with other desires
of their thoughts, and you'll have this fragmented psyche in you.
And it's just saying that happens in an organization, right
if you have I don't know, like part of the
police that aren't are isolated from the whole system and
have created their little.
Speaker 2: Internal state, you know, a little bit like how.
Speaker 1: When the CIA was dismantled with it in the early seventies,
this idea that it was said that they were a
kind of internal state, like a state that has its own,
its own intentions that weren't aligned with the intentions of
the full of the country. You know, there's a little
bit of that happening with Dose right now, where there's
a sense that there are these corrupt organizations and corruct
agencies that are taking the resources of the fullness. But
because they're isolated, then they become they don't know how
they connect, or they're not even trying to connect to
the fullness of the story. Then they're like parasites, right,
And so that's the problem when you separate things and
you don't have them united, is you can rule, you
try to a rule over them with a kind of tyranny.
But that Tierney is always in danger of this of
the problem. So this is what's happening with all the
severed characters in the story. Because they've forgotten their audi,
because they don't know their audi, right, they don't know
their wholeness, their interests begin to compete with the interests
of the whole. There begins to be competition between the two, uh,
you know, and you see that happen.
Speaker 2: In several of the characters.
Speaker 1: You know, in the characters of Helly, whereas literally they
seem to hate each other and be jealous of each other,
and the you know, the the Inny is basically hates
her Audi, and the Audi is trying to to infiltrate
her to fully inhabit her.
Speaker 2: Any I am a person, you are not. You know,
all of that is like a kind of dysfunction of hierarchy.
You see that.
Speaker 1: Uh, you know, of course, in the case of Dylan,
who you know, his his his fragmented part is like
is falling in love with his wife and is kind
of competing with his wife. All of that, all of
these different aspects of it, and ultimately you see that
in the final scene of.
Speaker 2: Season two.
Speaker 1: And this is what I want to kind of look
a little bit more at Mark, because Mark is the
best example of all of this, and if you look
at his story you get a sense of how all
this functions in the story. The origin of his severance
is already a kind of severance, is like there really
is a fractal thing happening in terms of his being severed,
and so in his severed state, he doesn't know that
the absurd things that he's doing, This idea of what
is it macro data refinement. If you think about what
that is, it's interesting because he's taking something whole, the
macro and he's making it more particular, which is, you know,
a little again in a little microcosm of the whole story,
and doing that is actually what is splintering and torturing
the person that he loves, right, it's increasing the severance,
which is remember, the original cause of the severance is
the severance in marks couple.
Speaker 2: That's the origin of the severance. And so that.
Speaker 1: He's in increasing the severance by doing the work of
sorting these numbers in all these different boxes. What he's
doing is he's increasing the severance, and he is torturing
his wife without knowing it. But he's torturing his wife
and is fragmenting her, breaking her down into more and
more absurd kind of iterations of human behavior. And this
representation is pretty genius.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: We find out that the night that she died, that
Gemma was taken into Lumen and she was taken down
to this lower level, right, this lower rung of hell
you could think of if you think of this descent
down the elevator as levels of hell. Now makes a
lot of sense to think of it that way. She
different from the others. Her any is also her audi
is also an any that if she doesn't actually have
an outside of the world, she's trapped in lumen. And
both her any and her audi are now completely fragmented,
and so she is really literally in hell. If the
others are more like someone who's sinning, who doesn't have
access to their full story and they're kind of broken
and fragmented.
Speaker 2: Really Gemma is in hell.
Speaker 1: From chiz Top Purples, she she's being tortured, and this
descent into idiosyncrasy and these little aspects of human behavior
that are completely separated from each other, they just they
become a form of torture for her. So what happens
is she's repeating the most mundane and idiosyncratic aspects of
human life. We see a few of her innis, and
she has twenty four and then the twenty fifth is
being prepared. Whenever any goes to the dentist all the time,
basically just basically goes from one dent is constantly going
in and out of the dental appointment. You know, can
imagine that to your life, like you just you go
to a dentist appointment, you leave, you come back right away,
and you're constantly in the in the dent It's like
the one that's literally hell, and the other one is
someone who's like writing Christmas cards over and over and
over and over NonStop. She has this huge pile of
Christmas cards. That's all she does, that's all her existence is.
And so, you know, I mean, so then you have
this beautiful image which is that Mark's Audi. When he
finds out that she is still alive though trapped in hell,
he decides to go down in hell to save her
and to bring her back into fullness and to integrate her.
Not only integrate her to her own psyche, he also
is trying to integrate his own psyche by integrating any
Mark into Audi Mark. But there's also a sense in
which he will integrate with her, you know, and they'll
recreate that union that was lost and was the source
of the severance in the first place. And so the
final limit of fragmentation. Interestingly enough, the last Inny that's
created by Mark's macrodata refinement is this room where Jemma
has to disassemble the baby's crib. Right, so now we
have this full circle, like I said, which is she's
going back to the trauma that started the whole severance, right,
which is her incapacity to have children, and her incapacity
for Mark and her to kind of join into that
higher form of unity. And interestingly enough, it's also a
reminder of how Mark started his own reintegration, if you remember,
by hosting a conversation with his with himself the inny
talking to his audi through the video camera at the
birthing cabin where he's in this cabin that's made for people,
for severed people to be able to give birth.
Speaker 2: So interesting there.
Speaker 1: And so but like basically, this disassembling of the of
the baby's crib is the final hell, it's the final deconstruction, right,
and we're told that this final deconstruction will end Gemma's life.
And it's there that Mark, you know, we could say
for all intents and purposes, he's killed the minotaur in
the maze and he rides like the story of Orpheus
who goes down into eighties to save his wife. You're
read to see, but see because Mark is severed, and
because Mark's INNI doesn't know, doesn't remember the whole right,
only truly knows his own fragmented experience, his own desires,
so he chooses to stay in Hell with his any
who interestingly enough, to stay in Hell with his own
ni's love, which is strangely enough, his name Helena, like
the woman that started the Trojan war, but also Helly,
so interesting, right, She's Helena in the sense that she
is the one that you save, but that leads to
the war. You know, she's the one that you fight for.
But she's the most beautiful, but also she has her
name is Helly, like Hell itself, as if she is
this image of.
Speaker 2: Mark's existence in Hell.
Speaker 1: And already you can see that in his experience with her,
there's like an extra level of severance, you know, already
in his experience because one time he sleeps with her
and it's actually the Helena from the Audi Helena that's
infiltrating the inside, and then the other time he sees
with her it's Helena's any But the thing is right,
is that because now there's a doubt you never know.
I mean, the whole time, at the end, I kept
asking myself, which Helly is it?
Speaker 2: I don't even know?
Speaker 1: Oh, I mean, she says that she's not the one
from the outside. But to be honest, like, I wouldn't
be surprised if one of the reveals in the next
season is that when he saves her at the end
and he runs off with her, that it's actually, you know,
the Helly from the outside.
Speaker 2: Maybe I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's not, it's not, it's not, it's not a it's
not clear, but probably not because there's this weird scene
with her father where her father.
Speaker 2: Says he sees the spirit of cure in her.
Speaker 1: So probably in this her case, you'll see a kind
of inversion where her Inni will become the Audi and
the Audi will become the Inny. Basically that she'll she'll
be the only one, I think, just prediction for the
next seasons, she'll be the only one that'll be like
freed from uh, not integrated, but freed from the the
the inside.
Speaker 2: We'll see, that's my prediction.
Speaker 1: So Mark decides to stay with Helly in hell Uh
and she lets him by the way, so the the
and they they both know that this is impossible, and
they do that they both know that their time is
up and that you know, there's no way now that
they can stay there together.
Speaker 2: It doesn't make any sense. It's completely absurd.
Speaker 1: And then he leaves Mark's Audi wife, you know who,
after all this time, has found her husband. He leaves
her screaming outside and alone. But you also totally understand
the motivations of all the characters, you know, because Marx
Inny isn't Marx Saudi, and he is completely severed, and
he doesn't see why he should act for the person
that put him in hell, Like why would you? Why
would you act to defend and to help the person
that imprisoned you in this situation?
Speaker 2: Right? An interesting thing related to all of this is that.
Speaker 1: And then just to show how really strong the writing is,
there's one scene that could be said to contain all
of Mark's story in a single moment, and that's what
makes it fascinating. There's a scene where Mark before the severance,
right on the night that his wife died, he's sitting
at his desk, he's working, and he's clearly already discouraged
and kind of alienated by the fact that they can't
have a child together. They can't have a family, right,
that true image of one and many that I mention,
And so he can't hear Gemma when Gemma tells him
that she loves him, he's too busy working, and then
when she repeats it, he answers kind of dismissively, oh
I love you too. But what he really means is,
all right, it's time for you to go now, basically
kind of waiting for her to leave. And then what's
interesting is that in that moment, right, there's the entire
story in seed form. The whole madness of severance and
of this breakdown into absurdity is hidden there as a
seed in that little scene. And you know, it's funny
because Gemma is like going to place charades. You know,
he's already kind of going into the puzzle, She's kind
of going into the maze, and out there he's already
lost her, and he's already lost himself.
Speaker 2: So yeah, really well done.
Speaker 1: Another aspect worth mentioning is that because the hierarchy is
presented as mostly negative, there's also a sense by which
the vertical cells, right, the audi is kind of like baggage.
You know, you could say that the audi also represents
a story that weighs too heavily upon them, and you
can think about it like that's what motivated the creation
of the Innie in the first place. You know, you
can think of it, yeah, as like an accumulation of sin,
you see that. Of course in the case of Bert,
where they'd say that the reason why they created the inner,
the innie Bert was because the outer outer Bert had
done these horrible things and when he dies, you won't
go to heaven. So let's create like a new little Bert,
a little inie Burt that might have a chance that
he might have a chance to go to heaven. So
this weird idea that in some ways the severance is
a way of reinventing yourself, of rediscovering some kind of innocence.
And you can kind of think that, like we all
have examples of that in our life. Think about like
when you if you move to a new city, you know,
or if you find new friends, or you start a
new job or a new relationship, and and that is
always an opportunity to you could say, cut off the
old and start a new and start a new story.
And that's image in the Bible, of course, as crossing
the sea, you know, going through the flood after a
corrupt tyranny like the pharaoh has been abandoned, and moving
into a new world. You know, it's an image of baptism,
you could say. And so that's an interesting aspect. But
in the darker aspect of this same structure, there's a
there is a basic anti hierarchy thing that permeates the
entire story.
Speaker 2: It's not surprising.
Speaker 1: It is a modern story, after all, and the Inneas
are portrayed as slaves that who are called, and you
kind of expect them, and you know that one day
that one day they will ultimately revolt against either their
Audi or against Lumen, you know. And in this angle,
you know, we see that there's a kind of atheist
vision or reductionist vision at hand, where revolution is really
the ideal. And that's why it seems to me, that's
why the religious aspect of the story, or this kind
of veneration of cure and this kind of religion.
Speaker 2: Of cure is is.
Speaker 1: How cure is like portrayed in art and literature, all
through the buildings, through these these kind of memory, these
kind of museums and places where they go to venerate.
Here is really a kind of cynical control what marks
called the opium of the mass, the masses and uh
and in that sense, ritualization is presented all all through
the series, and it's kind of presented as a kind
of false solemnity, you know, a kind of mechanical procedure,
obsession with detail, kind of OCD type behavior. And we
even discover, strangely enough, that there's a kind of cultishat
sacrifice aspect.
Speaker 2: To the story.
Speaker 1: Uh. You know, we see that when Gem is about
to be annihilated by the crib. And so this whole
religious aspect is dark and kind of perverted and and
uh and is not obviously not a positive imagery of
what religion can be or what religion is. Ultimately, the
entire structure of the story is kind of like an
agnostic structure in that sense, you know, where this idea
that the leader the arkans of the world are twisted,
you know, our reality as a kind of hell, it's
a prison, you know, it's it's a little bit of
the idea of reincarnation, this idea of of you know,
moving down into Maya, you know, going down into the
case where everything is kind of a flashy illusion and
that it's not enlightened.
Speaker 2: And so at the same time, so like the way
that is written is so surprising.
Speaker 1: That sometimes I have the insight that it's kind of
like a more successful version of the matrix, or a
better written one where you have this idea where that
the workers, the innies, the ones that are in the
matrix really in this case are the batteries in a
deeper way than in the matrix.
Speaker 2: You know, they're like the batteries.
Speaker 1: They provide the money, they provide the energy for those
higher selves to continue to exist, but they're not integrated
to the purposes and those identities, and so because of that,
they want to be free. They want to compete, they
want to revolt, and they want to escape the tyranny
that comes from a lack of love and the lack
of integration across the different levels of being. And so
that is these are my thoughts on Severance. I have
to say I really enjoyed it. I don't watch a
lot of things these days. It just takes up too
much time. But I'm really happy that I did. And
I hope that my insight was useful to you and
it helped you realize how this hierarchy of being functions,
and especially how it functions when it is not functioning,
when it is broken. So thanks everybody for your attention,
and I'll talk to you very soon.
Speaker 2: Bye bye.
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