“Severance” and the Tale of Two Selves

So much of the art that truly moves us portrays the unsolvable dilemma: Betray the self or perish. This is because we live in a system which requires us to betray our ethics and our instincts (toward compassion, toward play, toward reciprocity with nature) if we wish to survive. Failure to conform, failure to contort oneself to fill the ill-fitting, unfree suit of capitalism or authoritarian communism (state capitalism) means: homelessness, hunger, death.

It is the the theme of the popular series “Severance.” The way the show’s characters devise to survive jobs that are antithetical to their deep selves is to sever their self in half. One version of them goes to work and does mind-numbing computer work bullshit. Another version of them comprises their non-work home self and neither self can remember the activities or even the identity of the other.

Again and again, the powerful art of the last 200 (or 2000?) years depicts the saga of the compassionate, imaginative, primordial self seeking to maintain its integrity against the demands of a wicked, hierarchical mono-system. It is the story of the self seeking to prevent its own erasure. Depictions of this heroic struggle will continue as our primary story unless and until we develop communities that do not require the annihilation of the compassionate primordial self for survival.