[ExI] Severance

[Darin Sunley]

I think, when you look at the last episode of s1, both the stuff Lumon
intentionally did and the situation Dylan got himself into with the
switches [trying to avoid being spoilery] we're /well/ past "extension of
corporate ideology into vaguely religious territory" and /well/ into "the
corporate imagery was never the point." And that's without even thinking
about the book and its impact on the innies.

On Mon, Sep 15, 2025 at 11:21 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> There are quite a few corporations which in practice act somewhat like
> religions in real life.  This series takes such examples and extends
> them.
>
> On Mon, Sep 15, 2025 at 1:13 PM Darin Sunley via extropy-chat
> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> >
> > It's not about corporate anything, any more than "Truman Show" was about
> reality television. It's a religious allegory, and a very good one.
> >
> > Which might not be your cup of tea either, and that's fair, but the
> surface corporate imagery absolutely must not be confused for the
> substance, which is significant.
> >
> > On Mon, Sep 15, 2025 at 10:23 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> I'd never heard of the series.  After looking it up, the premise loses
> >> me very quickly.  I can see some corporate overlords wanting such a
> >> system, sure, but reality does not work that way - well beyond my
> >> "willing suspension of disbelief" levels.
> >>
> >> To take just one example: without going too much into things I
> >> shouldn't talk about much in public, let's just say I've worked in a
> >> place that attempted a lesser version of this, and it was trivial to
> >> smuggle messages past management.  I was hired to do things they
> >> couldn't figure out (otherwise, they'd have done it themselves), and
> >> this same knowledge involved means of interacting with the outside
> >> world (if it didn't, there would have been no work worth doing) that
> >> inherently opened up means of passing information that management did
> >> not know how to scan for.  From what I've read of the scanning systems
> >> in Severance, the exact same practice would have worked as-is in that
> >> setting too.  If management was able to set up a system to scan for
> >> this sort of thing, they'd have little to no need for technically
> >> competent employees in the first place.
> >>
> >> On Mon, Sep 15, 2025 at 1:29 AM Anton Sherwood via extropy-chat
> >> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > Any fans here?  I have just watched the first three episodes (one dvd)
> >> > of «Severance», whose premise may well be known to you even if you
> have
> >> > not watched any.
> >> >
> >> > I did not imagine the ramifications of the partition; I imagined it
> >> > shallower, though I cannot now say how.  Still, though innie-Mark asks
> >> > Petey (in one of his flashbacks) how he could know what "cubist"
> means,
> >> > there are plenty of signs that innies would not be lost in their home
> >> > culture; for example, in one scene Irving speaks of "gold, silver and
> >> > bronze" awards.
> >> >
> >> > Is the use of retro equipment (Seventies computer terminals, cassette
> >> > tape recording) meant to suggest that severance has been going on far
> >> > longer than we'd otherwise suppose?
> >> >
> >> > --
> >> > *\\*  Anton Sherwood  *\\*  www.bendwavy.org
> >> >
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