ESSAY
MAR. 2025

‘Severance’ offers a scathing critique of late stage capitalism; here’s where they’re getting it right.

BY OPENING ROUND

In February, Severance surpassed ‘Ted Lasso’ as Apple TV+’s most watched series. An elegant and highly irreverent promotional run that included a pop-up in grand central station in January are reasonably credited for the ascension of the high-concept series but the show is clearly resonating with a significant audience. In March the online streaming service boasted its fifth consecutive week on the streaming originals chart with Severance making it to fifth place, reaching a new weekly high of 681M minutes viewed. The obsessive viewership demonstrates a broad and growing interest in the masterful critique  of corporate culture offered by the creators.

The show explores the unsettling implications of its titular procedure, which separates a person's work identity from their personal life. Lumon, the biotech company behind this process, promotes it as a means to achieve work-life balance, but it creates chilling realities for the 'innies' who lack free will. The second season delves into philosophical questions about identity, examining whether severed individuals possess multiple souls or just fragmented ones. As characters like Mark investigate their mundane tasks, the show invites viewers to consider deeper meanings behind their actions and the true nature of selfhood.

A Workforce Out of Balance

The central idea of Severance takes the concept of corporate dissociation to the extreme, but a brief history of corporate culture provides context for the viral premise of the show.

Historically rooted in rigid hierarchies, corporate culture has evolved to embrace adaptability, inclusivity, and innovation.  At a high level, the evolution of corporate culture goes something like this:

Traditional Foundations → In the early days of business, a rigid hierarchical structure governed the organisational culture, emphasising authority, rules, and conformity. Companies were organised functionally, operated in siloes, and had a clear distinction between top management and employees, fostering a formalism and uniformity.

Adaptation → Technological advancements and changing workforce demographics shifted corporate cultures towards being more adaptive and inclusive. Organisations began embracing diversity, fostering creativity, and promoting innovation as the new pillars of corporate identity. The traditional top-down approach gave way to a more collaborative and agile working environment, enabling employees to voice their opinions and contribute to decision-making processes.

The Personal Tech Revolution → In the era of digital transformation, technology has emerged as a key catalyst in reshaping corporate culture. Individual worker mobility, virtual workspaces, remote collaboration tools, and digital communication platforms redefined the boundaries of traditional office settings, ushering in an era of borderless work cultures. The adoption of flexible working arrangements, remote teams, and virtual team-building activities became integral to sustaining employee engagement and fostering a sense of belonging in the digital age.

The People-Centric Approach → Through the global pandemic, organisations have experienced the crippling effects of unpredictable, rapid change to market dynamics, employee wellness and negative societal changes. Companies are increasingly focusing on employee well-being, work-life balance, and professional development opportunities to create a culture of trust, empathy, and resilience. Flexible work policies, wellness programs, and mentorship initiatives have become essential tools in nurturing talent and building a strong sense of community within organisations.

The traditional social contract of work has evolved in recent decades as employees seek greater balance between personal fulfillment and professional obligations. Long hours and loyalty to a single employer are losing their appeal, with movements like quiet quitting and FIRE advocating for healthier work-life dynamics. The rise of digital nomadism and the gig economy reflects a desire for autonomy and diverse income sources. The pandemic accelerated these trends, pushing workers to demand flexibility and meaningful careers. Employers must adapt to this shift or risk losing talent, as the new contract prioritizes employee well-being and purpose over outdated corporate expectations.

Today, corporate dissatisfaction is completely out of the closet. The idea of substituting your consciousness for another, wholly invented one, is a direct response to the state of play in corporate America.

The Ethics of AI and Identity

In the world of Severance, the characters literally live two distinct lives. Their “innies” (no relation to belly buttons) are their work selves. Their “outies” exist anywhere outside of work. In effect, characters clock in at work everyday where they are “severed” from their personal lives, and their innies and outies have no idea what’s going on in each other’s worlds. The show elegantly raises ethical concerns around the “agency” of severed employees that mirror growing concerns around the ethics of AI and identity.

With AI rapidly evolving from generative models that create content to agents that can perform tasks on our behalf, questions around identity and ethics for AI agents is becoming realer by the day. Agents fall into two categories: tool-based agents, which complete digital tasks through natural language, and simulation agents, which replicate human behaviors. Recent research has shown that AI can accurately mimic individuals' values and preferences. As companies develop AI agents that can act as digital twins, ethical concerns arise, including the potential for harmful deepfakes and the need for transparency about interactions with AI. The implications of this technology could be profound and require careful consideration.

Severance could really happen (kind-of).

While the "Severance" procedure depicted in the Apple TV+ show is a fictional concept, the underlying ideas of memory and consciousness separation, explored through the lens of split-brain patients, raise interesting questions about the potential for such a procedure in the future, though not in the way the show portrays it. 

The show highlights context-dependent memory, where memories are recalled more easily in the same environment they were formed. Although it simplifies memory systems, it accurately portrays some effects of memory and retrieval cues.

Neuroscientist Steve Ramirez suggests that while the show's concept is extreme, it reflects real-life phenomena like sleep and memory recall. He argues that the procedure doesn’t break any physical laws and posits that a version of it could theoretically exist. Ramirez highlights how our subconscious and conscious experiences influence one another, drawing parallels between the show and real memory dynamics, including infantile amnesia and how memories shape our identity despite being inaccessible.

According to London-based research Rachel Elward (PHd) “the human memory system is far too complex to be entirely split in two”, but it’s fun to think about the possiblities.

Seeking Integration

Corporate dissociation is a can of worms. Characters at Lumon Industries live in a state of severance, unaware of each other's worlds. While the concept gets ratcheted up to 11 in the world of Severance, the  show is prompting reflections on compartmentalization at a time where technology is barrelling towards sci-fi style reality. The show has created a cultural moment, with its language potentially becoming ingrained in society. The appeal of this disassociation reflects a desire to cope with modern life's complexities.