“Severance,” Alienation, and the Futility of Reintegration

The Apple TV science fiction psychodrama series, Severance (2022–), tells the story of a group of people who agree to work for a large corporation, Lumen, and to undergo a procedure called “severance,” in which a device is implanted into their brains, separating–or “severing”–their work memories from their non-work memories, and vice versa. Severance is represented visually, in the series, as the passage from non-work (“outties”) to work selves (“innies”). This occurs as the characters ride on an elevator taking them from the surface to a subterranean office space portrayed in the style of 1960s décor and comprised of flat surfaces, white walls and desks, and claustrophobic, labyrinthine hallways, with avocado-green carpeting. As they ride down on the elevator, their minds switch from one identity to the other, which likewise reverts back to their original non-work identity when they ride the elevator back up to the surface at the end of the working day.

The series makes it clear that the innies have no control over the choice of their working conditions, and that the outties are the ones who make the decision about whether or not to return to work every day. This is demonstrated quite dramatically when one of the characters, Helly (Britt Lower), makes numerous attempts to escape, at one point even trying to commit suicide by hanging herself in the elevator using an office power cord. The outties are able to communicate with their innie counterparts via video recordings. After making a request to her outtie via video to quit her job, Helly’s outtie sends back a video declining her request.

“Severance,” Alienation, and the Futility of Reintegration

 

Les Non-Dupes Errent

We are witnessing lately a gradual decay of the authority of what Jacques Lacan called “the big Other,” the shared space of public values within which only our differences and identities can thrive. This phenomenon is often falsely characterized as the “post-truth era.” Liberal resistances against vaccination on behalf of human rights make one nostalgic for Leninist “democratic socialism” (free democratic debate, but once a decision is taken, everybody has to obey it). One should interpret this democratic socialism in the sense of Kant’s formula of Enlightenment: not “Don’t obey, think freely!” but: “Think freely, state your thoughts publicly, and obey!” The same holds for vaccine doubters: debate, publish your doubts, but obey regulations once public authorities impose them. Without such practical consensus we will slowly drift into a society composed of tribal factions.

Here we can see clearly the link between individual freedom and social cohesion. The freedom to choose being vaccinated or not is, of course, a formal kind of freedom; however, to reject vaccination effectively implies limiting my actual freedom as well as the freedom of others. Within a community, being vaccinated means that I am a much less of a threat to others (and others are to me), so I can to a much greater degree exercise my social freedoms to mix with others in the usual way. My freedom is only actual as freedom within a certain social space regulated by rules and prohibitions. I can walk freely along a busy street because I can be reasonably sure that others on the street will behave in a civilized way towards me, will be punished if they attack me, if they insult me, etc.—and it is exactly the same with vaccination. No doubt, we can strive to change the rules of common life, as there are situations when these rules can be relaxed and also strengthened (as in the conditions of a pandemic), but a domain of rules is needed as the very terrain of our freedoms.

Therein resides the Hegelian difference between abstract and concrete freedom: in a concrete life-world, abstract freedom changes into its opposite, since it narrows our actual exercise of freedom. Let’s take the case of freedom to speak and communicate with others. I can only exert this freedom if I obey the commonly established rules of language (with all their ambiguities, including the unwritten rules of messages between the lines). The language we speak is not ideologically neutral; it embodies many prejudices and makes it impossible for us to formulate clearly certain uncommon thoughts. As, again, Hegel knew it, thinking always occurs in language and it brings with itself a common-sense metaphysics (view of reality), but to truly think, we have to think in a language against this language. The rules of language can be changed in order to open up new freedoms, but the trouble with Politically Correct newspeak clearly shows that direct imposition of new rules can lead to ambiguous results and give birth to new, more subtle forms of racism and sexism.

Les Non-Dupes Errent

 

The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion?

Towards the end of a conversation dwelling on some of the deepest metaphysical puzzles regarding the nature of human existence, the philosopher Galen Strawson paused, then asked me: “Have you spoken to anyone else yet who’s received weird email?” He navigated to a file on his computer and began reading from the alarming messages he and several other scholars had received over the past few years. Some were plaintive, others abusive, but all were fiercely accusatory. “Last year you all played a part in destroying my life,” one person wrote. “I lost everything because of you – my son, my partner, my job, my home, my mental health. All because of you, you told me I had no control, how I was not responsible for anything I do, how my beautiful six-year-old son was not responsible for what he did … Goodbye, and good luck with the rest of your cancerous, evil, pathetic existence.” “Rot in your own shit Galen,” read another note, sent in early 2015. “Your wife, your kids your friends, you have smeared all there [sic] achievements you utter fucking prick,” wrote the same person, who subsequently warned: “I’m going to fuck you up.” And then, days later, under the subject line “Hello”: “I’m coming for you.” “This was one where we had to involve the police,” Strawson said. Thereafter, the violent threats ceased.

It isn’t unheard of for philosophers to receive death threats. The Australian ethicist Peter Singer, for example, has received many, in response to his argument that, in highly exceptional circumstances, it might be morally justifiable to kill newborn babies with severe disabilities. But Strawson, like others on the receiving end of this particular wave of abuse, had merely expressed a longstanding position in an ancient debate that strikes many as the ultimate in “armchair philosophy”, wholly detached from the emotive entanglements of real life. They all deny that human beings possess free will. They argue that our choices are determined by forces beyond our ultimate control – perhaps even predetermined all the way back to the big bang – and that therefore nobody is ever wholly responsible for their actions. Reading back over the emails, Strawson, who gives the impression of someone far more forgiving of other people’s flaws than of his own, found himself empathising with his harassers’ distress. “I think for these people it’s just an existential catastrophe,” he said. “And I think I can see why.”

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/apr/27/the-clockwork-universe-is-free-will-an-illusion

 

The Simple Things That Are Hard to Do

Traditional Marxists distinguished between Communism proper and Socialism as its first lower stage (where money and the state still exists and workers are paid wages, etc.). In the Soviet Union there was a debate in the 1960s about where they were in this regard, and the solution was that, although they were not yet in full Communism, they were also no longer in the lower stage (Socialism). So, they introduced a further distinction between lower and higher stage of Socialism… Is not something similar going on with the Covid pandemic? Until about a month ago, our media were full of warnings about the second, much stronger, wave in the Fall and Winter. With new spikes everywhere and numbers of infections growing again, the word is that this is not yet the second wave but just a strengthening of the first wave, which continues.

This classificatory confusion just confirms that the situation with Covid is getting serious, with cases exploding all around the world again. The time has come to take seriously simple truths like the one recently announced by WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus: “The greatest threat we face now is not the virus itself. Rather, it’s the lack of leadership and solidarity at the global and national levels. We cannot defeat this pandemic as a divided world. The Covid-19 pandemic is a test of global solidarity and global leadership. The virus thrives on division, but is thwarted when we unite.” To take this truth seriously means that one should take into account not only international divisions but also class divisions within each country: “The coronavirus has merely lifted the lid off the pre-existing pandemic of poverty. Covid-19 arrived in a world where poverty, extreme inequality and disregard for human life are thriving, and in which legal and economic policies are designed to create and sustain wealth for the powerful, but not end poverty.” Conclusion: we cannot contain the viral pandemic without also attacking the pandemic of poverty.

How to do this is, in principle, easy: we have enough means to reorganize healthcare adequately and so forth. However, to quote the last line of Brecht’s “In Praise of Communism” from his play Mother: “Er ist das Einfache, das schwer zu machen ist. / It is the simple thing, that is so hard to do.” There are many obstacles that make it so hard to do and, above all, the global capitalist order. But I want to focus here on the ideological obstacle, ideological in the sense of half-conscious, even unconscious, stances, prejudices, and fantasies that regulate our lives also (and especially) in the times of crisis. In short, I suggest that what is needed is a psychoanalytic theory of ideology.

https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/the-simple-things-that-are-hard-to-do/

 

Power, Appearance, and Obscenity: Five Reflections

ONE: The New Obscene Master

The obscene public space that is emerging today changes the way the opposition between appearance and rumor works. It is not that appearances no longer matter since obscenity reigns directly; it is, rather, that spreading obscene rumors or acting obscenely paradoxically sustain the appearance of power. Things are in a way similar to what happened in the last decades with the figure of detective in crime fiction: he or she can be crippled, half-crazy, or whatever, but his/her authority as the infallible detective remains untouched. In the same way, a political leader can act in undignified ways, make obscene gestures, etc., but all this, by contrast, strengthens his position of a master.

It is similar with Trump who surprises us again and again with how far he is ready to go with his vulgar obscenities. As a climax of Trump’s attacks on the ex-FBI lawyer Lisa Page, at a Minneapolis rally in October 2019, he performed a mock re-enactment of her texts with Mr Strzok, her ex-lover, as though the couple were in the middle of sexual act, imitating her orgasmic throes. Lisa Page understandably exploded with rage. But the same story seems to repeat itself: Trump survives yet again what his enemies consider the final straw, which will destroy him.

We are here at the opposite end of Stalinism where the figure of the Leader should be kept unblemished at any price. While the Stalinist leader fears that even a minor indecency or imperfection would destroy his position, our new leaders are ready to go pretty far in renouncing dignity. Their wager is that this renunciation will work somewhat like the short note on the back cover of a book by a famous contemporary writer, the note intended to demonstrate that the author is also an ordinary human being like us (“in X’s free time, X likes collecting butterflies”). Far from undermining the greatness of the author, such a note strengthens it by way of contrast (“you see, even such a great person has ridiculous hobbies…”). We are fascinated by such notes, precisely and only because he or she is a great author; if such a note was about an average ordinary person, we would be indifferent towards it (“who cares what a nobody like that is doing in free time”).

https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/power-appearance-and-obscenity-five-reflections/

 

The Conscience of a Human Being

Sometimes, I wonder whether average human beings possess a conscience—an ability to independently judge and be motivated by moral truths—or if they instead possess only the instinctive disposition to conform to social conventions and the demands of the powerful. Most seemingly ethical behavior could be explained by such conformity—for instance, it could be that the reason why most refrain from robbing, raping, and killing other people is that those behaviors are contrary to the conventions of our society and the commands of our government. This would not require most human beings to possess a genuine conscience. The test of whether one has a conscience would have to be about whether one recognizes and is moved by moral considerations when those considerations fail to align with the social conventions, the law, or the commands of the powerful. The majority of human beings, by my read, fail that test about as badly as one could fail it.

For example, we know from the famous obedience experiments of Stanley Milgram that close to two thirds of people can be persuaded to electrocute an innocent person if ordered to do so by a man in a white coat.[1] We know from history that large numbers of people can be induced to participate in a genocide when so commanded by their government. In our own society today, most citizens are untroubled by behavior on the part of the powerful that would outrage us if performed by those without political power: If an ordinary person forcibly extracts money from his neighbors to fund his own charity organization, that person is a thief and an extortionist; if the government does the same, it is merely pursuing normal tax policy. If an ordinary person kills large numbers of people in order to bring about some political change, that person is a vicious terrorist; if our society’s dominant group does the same, this is a standard military operation.[2]

https://www.cato-unbound.org/2020/02/10/michael-huemer/conscience-human-being

 

Why Are We Tired All the Time?

The coronavirus epidemic confronts us with two opposed figures that prevail in our daily lives: those who are overworked to exhaustion (medical stuff, caretakers…) and those who have nothing to do since they are forcibly or voluntarily confined to their homes. Belonging to the second category, I feel obliged to use this predicament to propose a short reflection on different ways in which we can be tired. I will ignore here the obvious paradox of the enforced inactivity itself making us tired, so let me begin with Byung-Chul Han who provided a systematic account of how and why we live in a “burnout society.”[i] Here is a short resume of Byung-Chul Han’s masterpiece shamelessly taken from Wikipedia:

http://thephilosophicalsalon.com/why-are-we-tired-all-the-time/

 

Monitor and Punish? Yes, Please!

Many liberal and Leftist commentators have noted how the coronavirus epidemic serves to justify and legitimize measures of control and regulation of the people that had been till now unthinkable in a Western democratic society. Is the total lockdown of Italy not a totalitarian’s wet dream come true? No wonder that (at least the way it looks now) China, which had already widely practiced modes of digitalized social control, proved to be best equipped for coping with catastrophic epidemics. Does this mean that, at least in some aspects, China is our future? Are we approaching a global state of exception? Have Giorgio Agamben’s analyses gained new actuality?

It is not surprising that Agamben himself drew this conclusion: he reacted to the coronavirus epidemic in a radically different way from the majority of commentators. He deplored the “frantic, irrational, and absolutely unwarranted emergency measures adopted for a supposed epidemic of coronavirus” which is just another version of flu, and asked: “Why do the media and the authorities do their utmost to create a climate of panic, thus provoking a true state of exception, with severe limitations on movement and the suspension of daily life and work activities for entire regions?”

https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/monitor-and-punish-yes-please/

 

Tainted by association

When I first heard the allegations of serial sexual misconduct against the American folk-rock singer Ryan Adams earlier this year – that he had emotionally and psychologically abused several women and underage girls, using his status in the music industry as leverage – I didn’t want to believe it. Yet this desire to not-believe strongly preceded any acquaintance I had with the actual facts. Indeed – and as I am now ashamed to admit – I initially read the facts with great skepticism, hoping that they were wrong. Only with effort have I forced myself to put aside my initial disbelief, and consider things impartially, making a more balanced assessment. Why?

One answer comes from feminist theory. As a man who has been raised in a male-dominated society, one that tends to privilege the status and testimony of men, and to cast aspersions on those of women – most especially when it comes to issues of sex – I am ideologically conditioned to react this way. Sadly, I suspect there is much truth in this. But it is not the only explanation in play. Another consideration is that I didn’t want Adams to be guilty because I like his music. And the worry that I had – initially, without even realising it – was that, if Adams is indeed guilty, then I won’t be able to enjoy his music any more. And I don’t want that to be the case. Hence, I initially read the accusations against Adams with skepticism, precisely because I (subconsciously) wanted to protect my future enjoyment of his records.

https://aeon.co/essays/why-do-we-allow-objects-to-become-tainted-by-chance-links

 

Margaret Atwood’s work illustrates our need to enjoy other people’s pain

A well-crafted worldwide publicity campaign is raising expectations for The Testaments, Margaret Atwood’s sequel to her Handmaid’s Tale. This, perhaps, is the right moment to take a deeper look into the reasons of our fascination with the dark world of the Republic of Gilead.

Since Gilead is run by Christian fundamentalists, the best way to begin is with theology.

In his Summa Theologica, philosopher Thomas Aquinas concludes that the blessed in the kingdom of heaven will see the punishments of the damned in order that their bliss be more delightful for them. Aquinas, of course, takes care to avoid the obscene implication that good souls in heaven can find pleasure in observing the terrible suffering of other souls, because good Christians should feel pity when they see suffering. So, will the blessed in heaven also feel pity for the torments of the damned? Aquinas’s answer is no: not because they directly enjoy seeing suffering, but because they enjoy the exercise of divine justice.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/margaret-atwood-handmaids-tale-testaments-human-rights-slavoj-zizek-a9105151.html