“Severance” is currently one of the hottest shows on television.
It centers on Lumon Industries where people volunteer for a job on the “severed floor” requiring a surgical procedure that splits their consciousness in two: making it so work-you (your innie) and home-you (your outie) never meet.
What makes the show so interesting, dystopian themes notwithstanding, is how it exposes the uncomfortable truth behind what many of us think we want.
We’ve been sold the myth of “work-life balance” as the ultimate recipe for a happy life. The characters choose severance believing they’re getting exactly that. Perfect compartmentalization. Problem solved.
But what they’re really getting is fragmentation. And as the show unfolds, their severed selves start clawing toward wholeness with increasing desperation.
Turns out humans aren’t built to be fractured. Surprise!
The corporate world sells us a seductive fantasy: “Keep your work separate. Clock out completely. Live your ‘real’ life elsewhere.” But Severance reveals the psychological violence of this arrangement.
Viktor Frankl, who survived the horror of concentration camps, discovered that meaning isn’t something to be compartmentalized. It’s the thread that has to run through everything. After his harrowing experiences, he developed a therapeutic system called Logotherapy. Literally defined as “healing through meaning.”
The leaders who change the world don’t offer better boundaries—they offer better stories. More meaning. Gandhi didn’t check out at 5pm. MLK didn’t compartmentalize his dream.
Perhaps the most disturbing revelation of Severance isn’t the dystopian tech. It’s the nagging feeling that we’ve already done this to ourselves, without the surgical scars.
The question worth asking isn’t how to further separate our innies from our outies, but what story would make us not want to in the first place.
