Work-Life Balance Requires A Severed Brain
The desire to be severed even when knowing the consequences shows a bigger problem with the work force than anything else.
If you’re like me, you’ve been up to date watching the second season of Apple TV’s original series, Severance.
The show takes its name from the medical procedure its employees undergo to work there. A chip gets inserted into an employee’s brain, which splits their lives in two: an innie and an outie.
Innies work at the company, do their tasks, and essentially spend every minute there. An outie is a person who experiences home life and the outside world, away from work.
An innie doesn’t share a consciousness with their outie. Even though they are one person, they don’t share memories, the same group of friends, or any other commitments that carry over into each other’s lives.
The elevator employees take to head up to their department acts as a switch to turn on the innie personality. When they’re done for the day, the elevator heads down to switch to their outie personality.
Employees are physically one person, they just share two consciousnesses.
It’s a lot to take in if you’ve never seen the show before, but it defines a real problem many people deal with: a “perfect” work-life balance.
Is it manageable? Sure, but manageable isn’t enough: I need to have my brain severed.
It’s not a choice Lumon employees have, it’s something their employees are required to do when they’re hired. If they decide not to get severed, they don’t have the job.
It doesn’t seem so bad, right? You can easily forget about work stress, you won’t have to live through another 9-5, and the separation of work and family becomes easier.
Severed employees know there are two different versions of them, but don’t know what their other half is like. They can sometimes go by an entirely different name, personality, or life.
But…is it worth it? Do we dread our work lives so much that we may consider splitting ourselves into two halves?
Humans can sometimes be so caught up in their jobs, that it starts to become their life. This can become problematic, which is why severance is so sought after, but not practical.
If we don't want to be subjected to being in a room for hours at a time doing our job, why force the working half of ourselves to slave away without having any autonomy?
In Lumon, workers rarely have authority over themselves. If their boss asks them to do something, they must abide by or else they’re punished one way or another. It’s why they’re in a constant state of fear.
If an unsevered worker knew what was going on, they wouldn’t allow for that to happen and stand up for themselves. Severed workers are more vulnerable to being trapped in this endless work cycle.
On the other hand, the achievement of work-life balance can be so easy if someone chooses to be severed in just a few minutes versus committing to a balance for the rest of your life.
All this is to say that work-life balance has become such a struggle, people have considered getting severed if it was offered in real life.
The show provides enough explanations as to why it’s not a good idea, especially through Lumon’s questionable practices, but it’s more than that.
It begs the question: Could severance become a thing?
For Lumon, severance is done as a method of control. Their tasks seem meaningless, innies are never allowed to see the outside world, and “non-work” activities are held in their offices.
There’s still so much we don’t know about why Lumon severs specific employees or what each department does, but it’s clear that something much more sinister is going on.
If you want the perfect work-life balance, severance may be the way to go. It could be medically unsafe, unwell, and a bit suicidal, but at least there’s no more job stress!
While it’s not medically possible to be “severed” like the procedure in the show, a form of severance can come into practice, even if it’s not as invasive.
Realistically, the effects of the procedure mean someone would miss out on eight hours of their life, live in a constant state of confusion, and become dissatisfied with their “balance.”
If your other half can’t do anything besides working, is there any balance at all? It will eventually circle back to your working half becoming unhappy, which is the same problem that severance tries to “fix.”
Work-life balance is something you have to work hard at. Severance may be seen as a permanent solution, but the only thing permanent is losing your autonomy.