PMR Episode 444 Persons Don’t Disintegrate: Review of Apple TV’s ‘Severance’

This Postmodern Realities episode is a conversation with JOURNAL author Melissa Cain Travis about her article, “Persons Don’t Disintegrate: Apple TV’s ‘Severance’ and the Continuity of Identity Problem” https://www.equip.org/articles/persons-dont-disintegrate-apple-tvs-severance-and-the-continuity-of-identity-problem/  and Julie Miller about her sidebar article, “‘Severance’ and the Good Life”. https://www.equip.org/articles/severance-and-the-good-life/  (Editor’s Note: This article contains spoilers for Seasons 1 and 2 of Apple TV’s Severance)  

Related articles and podcasts to this subject: Episode 297 Why are we down here still working in the dark? (A Web TV Series Review of Severance)Why are we down here still working in the dark? (A Web TV Series Review of Severance)Related articles and podcasts by this author:Episode 435: The Pathos of the Reflective Naturalist: Meaning, Happiness, and Eternity in our HeartsThe Pathos of the Reflective Naturalist: Meaning, Happiness, and Eternity in our HeartsEpisode 282: Scientific Materialism and the Origin of Life ProblemFacing The Abyss: Scientific Materialism and the Origin of Life ProblemEpisode 238: Scientific Materialist Manifesto: The Pursuit of Meaning in a Godless UniverseScientific Materialist Manifesto: The Pursuit of Meaning in a Godless UniverseEpisode 062: How the Structure and Comprehensibility of the Universe Reveal a Mindful MakerA Grand Cosmic Resonance: How the Structure and Comprehensibility of the Universe Reveal a Mindful Maker

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Hi everyone, Thank you for tuning in to the Postmodern
Realities podcast, brought to you by the Christian Research Institute
and the Christian Research Journal. I'm Melanie Cogdill, Managing editor
of the Christian Research Journal. It's May twenty five and
this is episode four hundred and forty four, which is

(00:41):
a conversation about season two of Apple TV Plus's Severance. Today,
I welcome to guests onto the show. It is doctor
Melissa Kine Travis, who is a Fellow of Discovery Institute's
Center for Science and Culture. Is the author of Thinking
God's Thoughts and the author of Science and the Mind

(01:05):
of the Maker. I also welcome on the podcast for
the first time today, doctor Julie Miller. She has an
earned PhD in philosophy in humanities from Faulkner's Universities, Great
Books Honors College. She is also the author of Critiquing
Transhumanism The Human Cost of Pursuing Techno Utopia. Julie has

(01:27):
served with Raschio Christy since twenty eleven and she is
a Senior Fellow at the Society of Women of Letters.
Melissa has written an exclusive online feature article called Persons
Don't Disintegrate. Apple TV's Severance and the continuity of identity problem.
In addition, Julie Miller has written an accompanying article and

(01:51):
you can read both of their articles for free at
equipped dot org. That's e quip dot org. To have
you back on the podcast, And we have a new
voice on our podcast today, and that's doctor Julie Miller.
I'm excited to talk to both of you about Severance.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
Yes, thanks for having me back, Melanie. I'm really excited
to have Julie in the conversation today. I think she
can bring an angle to the discussion that will be
unique and intriguing to the listeners.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
Thanks for having us.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Oh, yes, I'm really glad to have you.

Speaker 4 (02:27):
So.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
Severance has become this big kind of water cooler cultural
phenomenon right now. It's very much trending. It's the series
of the moment, and I don't know, when it first
came out, it sounded like people hadn't really seen it,
And now that the new season has come out, people
are discovering it and it's become the new big hit

(02:47):
series that everybody's been talking about. All kinds of people
that I didn't know watch TV in my circles, like
some friends at church. They're all really into Severance and
watching it every week, And I want to ask you, guys,
first of all, what drew you to watching the show
and why are you so enthusiastic about it? I know,

(03:08):
for me, I'm someone and we've covered this in the
Christian Research Journal years before we had podcasting who watched Lost?
So this kind of had that Lost kind of vibe
to me, or some of those kind of shows where
there's a mystery to be solved or some kind of
riddle to be solved or answered. And so I was

(03:29):
immediately when I read that it was coming very interested
in the premise.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
Yeah, so shows like this one and like Lost. I
was also a huge, huge Lost fan. But this episode, sorry,
not this episode, but this season of Severance and all
the reading that I've then pertaining to the show has
introduced me to a term I had actually never heard before,
and it was the puzzle box television show. And that's

(03:57):
how they classify Lost, That's how classify Severance and other
shows where there's this mystery that's just very very gradually unraveling.
And I love that. But it's also true that science
fiction's my favorite genre of both film and television, so
to have science fiction combined with a puzzle box concept

(04:19):
is really exciting to me, and I'm very fortunate that
my husband has the same taste in TV and film
that I do, so we have a lot of fun
watching new things like this. But when Severance popped up
on our radar, we actually knew nothing about it going in.
We just saw the little picture pop up on our

(04:39):
Apple TV app and we read the synopsis. It sounded
super intriguing, so we watched the season one, episode one
the very day it came out, and we were hooked
immediately because you're plunged into this strangeness and mystery from
the very first scene of the show, and the cinema

(05:00):
photography is really cool. The writing is outstanding, and at
first we were worried that it would be one of
those shows that starts out really great and you have
this deep mystery and then as time goes on it
fizzles or the pacing is terrible. But we thought it
was exactly the opposite, because each new episode seems to
draw you deeper and deeper into the mystery, and for me,

(05:23):
all these weird philosophical questions that it raises, and I
think we ended up watching season one like four times
through while we waited for season two to came out,
because it took forever. It was like three years after
season one that season two finally came out. And then
just this past week, I started all the way back

(05:45):
at the beginning and started watching the first season again.
And what's so interesting is even this time around, I'm
catching different lines from different characters and different visual cues
that are so subtle I hadn't noticed them before. And
then it's been interesting to see how many YouTubers have

(06:05):
started trying to pinpoint all the different little Easter eggs
and kind of geek out on all the trivia associated
with some of the visual clues. And that would be
really fun if I had time to go down all
those rabbit holes, but I don't, so it's good that
I have a lot more interest in the philosophical issues
that are raised by the show.

Speaker 1 (06:28):
So one thing about Severance is it's, like you said,
it's got so many different emphasis in it, and there's
kind of they put together this dystopian science, and it
was interesting. After the end of season two, I listened
to a podcast with two people in neuroscience. I think

(06:48):
one's a psychologist, but they have degrees and that they're
both doctors, and they were talking about is it possible?
But there's some of the things that they show in
severns that are things that are actually done. So it's
very interesting. So let's describe the series because some people
it's been so long, it's been three years. Why don't
you before we get into what is being severed, can

(07:12):
you give an overview, a little bit big kind of
ground overview, either Julie or Melissa, what the series is
about for some of our listeners who maybe they're just
they don't know what this is about and they're just
tuning into this podcast.

Speaker 4 (07:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
Yeah, So since I'm a lot more obsessive about the
show than Julia's, I'll just give a little overview here.
So the idea behind the series is that a technology
has been developed such that you can have a chip
implanted in your brain, and when the chip is activated,
it severs you into two separate consciousnesses, so that your

(07:49):
new conscience that results from the severed process does not
retain all the memories of your original consciousness, and you can,
through this technology, switch back and forth, like episodically, between
these two different consciousnesses, and the advantage to someone giving

(08:12):
the severed feature is that they can then move forward
living part of their life without the psychological pain, whether
it's like greed or anxiety or fear or just traumatic
memories or whatever. They can live at least part of
their life without consciousness of all of this psychological yeftness.

(08:36):
And so that's the opening premise of the show. And
then as this show moves on, you start to encounter
more of these philosophical questions, like at what constitutes an
individual human person and so on and so forth. And
then part of the big puzzle box of the series
is that you have this corporation lumined Technologies that seems

(09:02):
to have tentacles all throughout the society, and you start
really expecting there to be some revelations of nefarious practices
and so on and so forth, and that as it
goes on, turns out to be true. But they do
a really fantastic job of just keeping you guessing from

(09:23):
one episode to the next, well, who's in charge and
what's being manipulated here and what's actually reality over here.
It's I just think it's quite brilliant. And so, like
I said, we were hooked from episode one.

Speaker 1 (09:40):
So you talked about the severing technology where you have
a different consciousness but in the same body, but that
consciousness is not aware of the other consciousness. And in
the series, these two different consciousnesses are called innis and
Audi's and the context of it is work. So you're
in who is a separate consciousness is only kind of

(10:05):
awake during your work hours, and then your AUDI is
your out of office kind of hours. Is what's happening there?
And I mentioned that I heard a podcast with some
people who work in neurology, and I would like to
know this severing technology that you just talked about, that
you know, fictional chip that you put into someone's brain
to help sever their consciousnesses. As it is in the series,

(10:28):
it seems really, you know, out there, like you're talking
about sci fi and really radical to most people. But
is something like this possible even in theory? I mean,
that's some of the discussion that I heard between these
folks that worked in neurology. Is something like that even possible?

Speaker 3 (10:48):
I'll answer this one, Melanie. So the show doesn't really
reveal the exact nature of de savering technology, and I
think Melissa described it very well, but there is, like
you've probably heard on that podcast, current technology being developed
to erase negative memories, which seems to be the motivation

(11:13):
of our characters and the appeal of being severed right
to erase or to have some relief from negative or
traumatic memories. Well, the first time I ever heard about
such a thing was from David Piers. Now he's a
philosopher and a transhumanist, so he's not like a neuroscientist

(11:35):
or a cognitive scientist, but he's the co founder of
Humanity Plus, which is the big transhumanist organization, and he
said this, in the future, I think all bad memories
will be selectively erased, and this is on their website
Humanities Plus. The technology in the show goes far beyond

(11:56):
just selectively erasing memories, as I think Melissa is going
to get into about identity. But the current research on
erasing memories is progressing, so it's an active research project,
you could say. In twenty seventeen from Columbia University, there

(12:16):
was a paper entitled select memories can be erased leaving
others intact, and their findings showed that they had successfully
erased select memories from a snail Okay, so we're not
talking about humans yet, but that's how all good research starts.

Speaker 1 (12:34):
Right.

Speaker 3 (12:35):
In a recent Times article, and this was in March
of this year, the paper the article was entitled how
realistic is the Severance procedure? Brain surgeons have some thoughts,
and this particular brain surgeon, doctor human Osmy, says this,
I don't believe that the memory control Severance depicts is

(12:59):
entirely of the realm of possibility.

Speaker 5 (13:02):
Not.

Speaker 3 (13:03):
He's very modest, so he says, just not in the
foreseeable future. We'll probably reach the day that perhaps we
can deselect memories, but he thinks it's many years away,
so he's got a modest view about the technology. However,
this was interesting goes back to how you think that

(13:24):
how you think lay people are responding to this kind
of technology. This was in Trends in Neuroscience and the
paper was entitled how to erase memory traces of pain
and Fear? And the conclusion the whole paper was there
is clearly a great demand to erase the memory traces

(13:47):
of pain and fear. Understanding to achieve this goal is
only just emerging, and that's exactly what researchers are working on.
But the weird thing was, after I read I've read
this paper, I saw Adam Scott interviewed on I think
it was Jimmy Kimmel, and I couldn't find it to

(14:07):
tell you the exact date of it or whatever. And
Jimmy Kimmel asked the audience if they would want to
be severed, because the whole interview was about severance, and
about half the audience cheered and clapped. So I think
that's very telling and kind of something. Maybe we can

(14:28):
talk about what's driving and motivating regular audience members to
be to say they would undergo this technology if it
was available. So to sum up, I mean the technology
to erase select memories isn't yet available for humans, but
I would say that it's being researched.

Speaker 1 (14:51):
As I've noted for the last several episodes, we'd like
to hear from you. We would like to be able
to hear your ideas and thoughts on the contact we
have at the Christian Research Journal. So if you have
a suggestion for an article, idea that you would like
to see us cover, or you would like to write
a letter to the editor, perhaps one of our articles

(15:14):
struck you in a particular way and you would like
to make a comment about it, please contact us at
Response at equipp dot org. That's Response at equip dot org. Now,
if you haven't checked out our website, please go to
equip dot org because we have thousands of articles that
spanned our almost fifty years of publishing, and so we

(15:37):
are resource here for you. There's so much for you
to discover, and all of our articles, even from decades
our go, are still very relevant because we are covering
theological topics and Christian ethics and Christian living. And so
please we welcome you to explore our website at equip
dot org. And now back to my conversation with Melissa Kane,

(16:01):
Travis and Julie Miller about Severance Season two. Well, we're
kind of talking about is this possible in real world,
real life situations, and it's kind of interesting. Not necessarily
like this fictional severance procedure, but there's actually a split
brain surgery procedure that goes back, oh my goodness, more

(16:22):
than sixty years and I think it was for people
who had epilepsy. But also when this happened, it really
did have two different parts of the brain were not
communicating the way it had been before. So that's really fascinating.
So I want to ask you about these real life cases.
And before I do, before the break, Julius mentioning Adam

(16:44):
Scott on a Late nine TV show. That's the actor
who plays the main character Mark s or Mark Scout,
and he is somebody in the show that we follow
who has been severed. But how are some of these
real life cases of little role split brain surgeries. Are
they different than Severance or are they, you know, kind

(17:06):
of adjacent to Severance.

Speaker 2 (17:09):
So I'm gonna let Julie say say the most about this,
but I want to offer one thing that sort of
bridges our previous question with this idea of the split
brain procedures. So I would say that what they're portraying
in Severance definitely crosses a line from scientific feasibility even

(17:35):
in the future. That's what I mean by scientific feasibility.
Could it ever happen? Two more fantastical stuff that we
could say is just pure science fiction. And as I
was doing some research to prepare for our podcast, I
found a really interesting essay on the Scientific American website
where Melanie they talk about the split brain procedures and

(17:57):
how this might compare to what's going on in the show.
And this particular essay came out this past January, so
they released it ahead of the premiere of season two
of Severance, but they were exploring this idea of what
it would possibly look like to use a chip to
sever somebody, and the authors of the essay explained that

(18:20):
the hippocampus of the brain is probably the most likely
candidate for any physical brain structure that could actually be
manipulated in this type of way. And the reason that
for that is because the hippocampus is responsible for segmenting
our conscious experiences into discrete episodes that we can later recall,

(18:44):
and then there's this spatial element that's also involved in
this kind of processing that happens with the hippocampus. But
simply severing the connections in the hippocampus like sort of
analogous to what we do in a real life split
brain surgery, it wouldn't achieve what we actually see on

(19:05):
the show between the innies and autis because there are
just so many other aspects of consciousness that would also
have to be manipulated, and that would include things like
our semantic knowledge, our memories, emotional memories of things like
the rewards and the punishments that happen on the severed floor.

(19:26):
You know, they go to that really creepy room and
they're essentially psychologically tortured if they do something bad enough,
or they get fun little parties like the egg party
or the melon ball party or the waffle party if
they do something good. So it's like this punishment rewards thing,
but emotional memories of things like rewards and punishment could

(19:52):
not be achieved with real life examples of hippocampus manipulation.
And then the article's authors also pointed out that when
it comes to episodic memory retrieval, which is what they're
trying to prevent with the separate procedure, right, there's this
whole brain wide network involved. It's not just one part

(20:17):
of the brain that you could target. And then there's
a whole extra problem involving memory, and that is that
memories very closely related to a lot of other cognitive
processes like perception and language and those kinds of things
are associated with completely separate regions of the brain. And
there's this scene in the first episode of season two

(20:41):
that immediately struck me as problematic in this regard, and
I just want to mention it before I turn it
over to Julie to talk more about split brain. But
in the first episode of season two, we're introduced to
Mark's new team in Macrodata Refinement, and one of them
is a young woman named Gwendolen Why. And Gwendolen approaches

(21:05):
Mark because spoiler alert, in season one, his any is
able to briefly experience the outside world, and so Gwendolen
so excited to talk to Mark about his experience, and
she says, what was the sky like? And what was
the wind like? And I immediately had this red flag
and my question was, well, how would Gwendolen Why have

(21:30):
these abstract semianitic concepts of things like the sky and
the wind, but not also have perceptual memories of those things,
such that she has to ask Mark s well, what
is the sky like and what is the wind like?
That just didn't make much sense to me. So all
of that to say, I think this whole splitting of

(21:51):
consciousness in the way it's presented on the show is
probably impossible, but you know, maybe something far more modest
in terms of memory manipulation could one day be achieved.
I think some of the data that's recorded from the

(22:11):
early split brain surgeries back in the nineteen forties and
nineteen fifties is pretty fascinating, where you could ask patients
after surgery to answer a question and what they would
answer out loud would be different than what they would
write down. If they were writing down the answer to

(22:32):
the question. Their answers would conflict, which was really interesting
and opens up questions about, well, which sides of our
brain are responsible for what kind of processing. But anyway,
I'll turn it over to Julia, let her say a
little bit more about that.

Speaker 3 (22:47):
Yeah, I mean, and that's the benefit of studying split
brain patients is the you know, what hemisphere is response
of our brains are responsible for certain things. I think
that the real information they get. But regarding it's just
like Melanie said, I mean, this was early in the

(23:09):
twentieth century that they did split brain procedures for those
very severe patients with epilepsy, and actually it's sort of
the last thing they would do if they can't, if
drugs or anything don't work. Today they still do split

(23:29):
brain for very severe cases of epilepsy. But so during
the procedure. It's just like Melissa said, the connections between
the hemispheres are severed to prevent the spread of the
epileptic activity, but also communication between the hemispheres is severed.

(23:51):
So what they had had. The traditional view up until recently.

Speaker 4 (23:58):
Was that.

Speaker 3 (24:01):
The person the severed that split brain patient had two consciousness,
had two seats of consciousness, but so that the person
would experience split consciousness.

Speaker 4 (24:16):
Okay, this was.

Speaker 3 (24:18):
The findings very early, but like recently, I mean fairly recently,
they still study split brain patients, by the way, that
so it's not all said and done. A twenty seventeenth
study from the University of Amsterdam it's called the paper
was split brain does not lead to split consciousness, and

(24:40):
their findings concluded that split brain patients do not have
two independent conscious perceivers in one brain. Although the two
hemispheres are completely insulated from each other and separated, the
patient experiences the world as one agent, so, in other words,

(25:02):
it does. Those findings actually provide evidence that consciousness, being immaterial,
can't be split. Like your brain is material, it can
be split, but consciousness identity, the self first person consciousness,
they're not identical to your brain you have a brain.

(25:24):
You are not your brain that you have a brain.
So I think that's I think it will continue to
have these kinds of findings, and I agree with Melissa
that the two consciousness theory is not going to.

Speaker 4 (25:42):
It's not going to be achieved.

Speaker 1 (25:45):
So I want to talk about some of the philosophy
that is hinted at in the series. I think we
were talking off air before we started that they've introduced
a bunch of stuff that I don't know if they
have thought through some of the philosophical quotquestions that they're
asking beyond the nature of people at work or corporations

(26:06):
and things like that, which is the setting of this
kind of sci fi post you know, you know, kind
of like a just one of these made up worlds
within our real world's kind of place. But one of
those big overarching philosophical questions that really is in both
of the seasons of the show is whether this severance

(26:27):
procedure makes someone.

Speaker 2 (26:29):
Into two different people?

Speaker 1 (26:31):
And so how do you think they've handled this question,
because definitely, like you said, there was a point at
the end of season one that's the big, you know,
kind of cliffhanger where they're any the person that's only
conscious at work suddenly is in a situation where their
audi lives and they see something they've never seen before.
So how do you think that they have handled this?

(26:53):
Even if it couldn't technically We talked about the science
could have technically be done right now, not really, but
what about the philosophical questions behind it?

Speaker 2 (27:03):
Well? As for me, I've been a bit frustrated, really,
not just because they seem to be ignoring some of
the deeper philosophical questions. Maybe ignoring's not the right word,
but they don't seem to be intentionally trying to interact
with the philosophy involved. But I've been a bit frustrated

(27:26):
in another way because there seems to be a lack
of consistency in the way they're treating some of these
deeper questions. I don't know, again, if this is intentional
on the part of the writers, I'm guessing it could be.
Maybe this is part of their strategy for generating discussion
and debate with their fans. If that's their intent, then

(27:49):
that's pretty genius and it has totally worked. But very
early on in season one, just to give you an
example of where I think there's some inconsistency and the
treatment of the questions. There's this scene where Helena, who
is an Audi, says to her Any, helly R, I

(28:11):
am a person and you are not. Okay, So we
seem to have this very succinct statement about what the
show is claiming about what an audi is and what
an any is not. And then we have on several
different occasions, Mark, our main protagonist, as his Audi marks Scout.

(28:34):
He makes these various comments about his Any being him
rather than being a separate person who's trapped on the
severed floor over at Lumin. And then there's a scene
that I thought was actually pretty powerful in some ways,
it will turn out to be pivotal, I think when

(28:55):
we get to season three where they're having this bereavement
service for Irving b Okay. So Irving b the ny
is no longer because he's been terminated from Lumin. So
they have this bereavement service because when someone never comes back,
it really is for the any community, as if this

(29:17):
person is died, right, they're never going to be in
a situation where they will encounter Irving again. So they
have this bereavement service, and Mark is impatient, like he
just wants it to be over so he can get
back to work, and there ensues this whole discussion about
don't you hear that your friend has died? And Mark

(29:40):
says he's not dead, he's just not here. So clearly
Mark is still operating on this idea that no, we
are not two separate people. We are the same person.
We just have two different conscious lives going on thanks
to the severance procedure. So we have this philosophical discussion

(30:06):
of the necessary and sufficient criteria for personal identity and
then how we account for the persistence of someone's personal
identity over time. And this is a conversation that philosophers
have been having for centuries, in centuries. I'm currently working
on an article for Christian Research Journal on this topic,

(30:29):
and I'm going to unpack some of the different philosophical
accounts that relate to these concepts that are explored in Severance,
even if they're not explored very well in the show.
And one example would be the issue of the persistence
of identity over time. Now, philosophers call this diachronic identity,

(30:50):
which is just a fancy way of saying your continuation
of your identity every time. So in severance in the
case of the audis in the Innis, if we say
that we have two separate people who are merely taking
turns being conscious in the same body, then we ask

(31:10):
questions like, well, then where does the AUDI go when
the any person is active, or vice versa. So there
was this seventeenth and early eighteenth century philosopher named gottfrit Leibnitz,
and he argued that you cannot have two distinct entities

(31:32):
in the exact same spatial location at the exact same time.
But you see where this is a problem for the
severance plot, because they're trying to say that the Innian
Audis both still continue to exist, they just exist in
alternating episodes. But that's problematic because if you have someone

(31:56):
go down to the severed floor and you want to say, okay,
now the Any excus the Audi's not existing right now.
You can't have the AUDI simply come back into existence
at a later time. What you would essentially have on
their account is just a series of copies one after

(32:16):
another of each of these the Any and the Audi.
You would never have one Audi who exists over time
in one Any who exists over time, because you lack
the grounding for their personal identity. The physical brain is
not sufficient to be the kind of grounding that you

(32:38):
would actually have to have. And here's a little shout
out back to our our show Lost. If any of
our listeners watch that show, you'll remember one of the
prominent characters, the bald guy in the show. His character's
name was John Locke. Well, John Locke was one of
the famous philosophers that talked about this problem of the

(33:00):
continuity of personhood, and he actually believed that psychological continuity
is a main factor. And what he meant by that
was that our recollection of past experiences is how we
have a sense of our own continuity. But he wouldn't
even further than that. He's like, it's not just that

(33:23):
having recollection of past experiences gives us a sense of
self that persists through time. He said that our personal
identity actually consists in episodic memory. So that's really interesting.
Think about the implication of that. You could go down
all sorts of rabbit trails. So think about amnesia patients

(33:46):
who permanently lose their long term memory storage, Like, what
would we say, are they just a different person? Now?
Are they the same person who just has problems with
their memory, and we could the same question about a
dementia patient, for example. So I think for those sorts

(34:06):
of counterexamples are reasons to believe that John Locke was way,
way way off when he said that your personal identity
actually consists in your episodic memory. But if you think
about the innis in severance, when they wake up on
the severed floor for the very first time, okay, they
wake up on this table in the conference room, they

(34:28):
have no psychological continuity of any kind in this moment,
not that they're consciously aware of. So they're not really
a tabula rasa or a blank slate as we call it,
but they lack all of their experiential memory. So John

(34:48):
Locke the philosopher, suggested a situation in which you could
have what he called the waking sleeping Socrates scenario. And
the basic idea of this is that you could theoretically
have two separate consciousnesses but just one body. Okay, so

(35:12):
in principle, you could have one physical human entity but
two separate consciousnesses that take turns. And I was like, Oh,
that's really cool. That sounds a whole lot like what
they're doing in severance. So you have waking Socrates that
has one set of experiences and memories and actions, and

(35:32):
then you have sleeping Socrates who is oblivious to waking Socrates,
and so on and so forth. So waking Socrates could
do something morally reprehensible, and sleeping Socrates would not be
liable for whatever words, thoughts, or actions that were carried out.
And so again, the audis in the innis in Severance

(35:54):
are sort of similar to this kind of situation. But
then the show sort of rows you for a loop
because's like, Okay, they're doing the whole John Locke thing
with waking sleeping Socrates. But then you find out that
there is this reintegration procedure which will with one of

(36:16):
the first characters that we encounter who's had this done,
it turns out to not have been a great thing
for him. But then we have Mark in season two
deciding to undertake the reintegration procedure, and we see he's
getting like memory crossover, that Enny is having flashes, Marcus

(36:36):
an Audi is having flashes of things that were previously
only accessed by their other consciousness. And then one really
interesting thing that they've thrown into the show before Irving
is fired from Severance. They have Irving's Audi experiencing I

(36:58):
guess you could say subconscious memory, and it's manifesting in
these paintings that he obsessively creates, and they're all of
this same dark hallway that's on the severed floor of Lumen.
So there's really no way the Audi could have memory

(37:18):
of that, but somehow those memories are working their way
into the Audi's subconscious and so I have the sense
that what the show Severance is trying to portray is
not that the severance procedure really gives you two separate persons.

(37:39):
It's not multiplying a person by having them undergo the
severance procedure. I think a better way to describe what
they're trying to portray is the fragmentation of one person.
So you get a fragmented consciousness situation, not bringing into

(38:01):
existence a brand new person.

Speaker 1 (38:05):
Because these various different consciousnesses exist in one body. It's
not like you have separate bodies or they didn't clone
somebody else to be a different person that they put
a consciousness that looks the same like two different people.
It's interesting in at different times in the show there's

(38:27):
interaction between the innies and the audis, and I think
that happens more in season two. It depends on the character.
Sometimes the characters there seems to be an alliance between
both of those consciousnesses, and then sometimes there's more of
a like a struggle between both of those, especially as

(38:49):
it's seen in the very last couple of episodes. So
do you think this is intentional on part of the
show's writers. I kind of side with you, Melissa in
that I feel like that they're asking some philosophical and
spiritual questions that they don't realize that they're asking and
posing some of these different scenarios. So, you know, I

(39:10):
want to know if you think it's intentional, And also,
what do you think is like a big you know,
takeaway that we should think about in terms of you
were just talking about identity in terms of what identity
is in the context of the show. Because they're not housed,
they're different fragments, I guess in the same person. They're
not housed in different bodies.

Speaker 2 (39:32):
Right, right, So I'm not entirely sure what the writers
are trying to do in this regard. It could be
that they're just exploring, right, It's just like this experimental
show in which they just explore all the different issues
that would arise as a result of this fictional severance procedure.

(39:55):
And maybe maybe, as I said earlier, ambiguity is part
of their storytelling technique. They want people to be obsessing
over all the different theories like people are doing. You
only have to go to YouTube and type in severance
to see all the theory videos. But there are some

(40:16):
very clear conflicts that are arising between the interests of
the Audis and the interests of the Innis. There's more
language and action that strongly implies we're dealing with two
separate teams. I guess you could say two separate teams
of people. And you really start getting the team vibe

(40:37):
at the end of season one when they do do
the override contingency thing. You know, they're all working together
to figure out what the heck's going on between the
severed world and the outside world. And I don't know
if the writers want us to have like a team,
you know, a preference for the Audis or a preference

(40:58):
for the Innies or one of the Audis, so on
and so forth, or if they just want us to
go back and forth in our own minds about who
we'd want to win, so to speak. And I'm not
really sure what a big takeaway would be concerning the
personal identity problem, or even if the writers intend for
there to be a clear answer, or if they've even

(41:20):
thought about whether we should be asking a question about
personal identity problems in the real world. I don't know.
So I think a lot of this just really remains
to be seen.

Speaker 1 (41:35):
So there's some interesting different there's so many interesting different scenes.
But there's some interesting scenes between some of the characters
that you've mentioned in so far, but maybe some of
our listeners might not know, so I'll just go over
some of who they are. But I'd like to ask
you a question about some of the beloved characters, and

(41:57):
that is Bert and Irving. So Bert and Irving are
two severed individuals, and in the you've mentioned retirement for
one of them, but in the office at Lumen they
start developing a romantic relationship. And then on the outside

(42:19):
Bert is in real life married to another man named Fields,
and so I have an interesting dialogue situation when Irving
goes over and visits Burt and Fields in the outside world,
and it's a dinner conversation that they're having, and they
talk about heaven and Hell, so that raises, you know,
philosophical and theological, spiritual issues, and I like to get

(42:42):
your thoughts on some of that because that's a little
bit more direct. Sometimes there's a little bit more direct
conversations about some of these issues than others. It's just
kind of suggested, but that was something that they were
directly talking about.

Speaker 2 (42:54):
Yeah, it sort of came out in nowhere. I was
shocked and delighted that they chose to tackle these kinds
of issues in the context of the show. We could
do a whole series of podcasts just on that one scene.
I've gone back and watched it several times. I think
it's brilliantly acted. I think the dialogue is so well done. So,

(43:16):
as you said, we have this same sex couple Bert
in Fields that Bert's Oudi and then Fields the man
that he's married to, and they attend a Lutheran church
and they've been taught in their church that Innis and
Audi's actually have separate souls. Okay, so that's interesting. But

(43:39):
then they have this very strange theology. It's this performance
or merit based idea of salvation so you do enough
good things and you avoid enough people things, and you
get into heaven. But if your bad behavior outweighs your
good behavior, then you go to hell. And so Bert,

(44:01):
who had met Irving and fallen in love with Irving
as an inny, Bert, explains that in his younger years
he uses the word scoundrel. He's like, I was called
a scoundrel, and so he and Fields, after learning through
their church that innies have their very own souls, they decided, well,

(44:22):
if Bert gets severed, then that would be an opportunity
for a part of Bert. And that's how they put it.
I think that's a very telling phrase there. So when
they say a part of Bert, they're talking about Bert
as he exists as any with like a clean slate soul,
so to speak, who has another chance to get life

(44:46):
right and earn his way into heaven. So they're like, okay, well,
part of Bert would then be able to make it
into heaven and he can be with Fields through all eternity.
So clearly they have this idea of two separate soul
merit based salvation. But it's really unclear whether they see
this two souls concept as synonymous with two persons. It

(45:11):
sounds like they see it as a fragmentation concept like
I mentioned earlier, where you have the fragments of one
person have two separate souls, But that would be really weird,
Like it's almost like giving human scientists the ability to
create new souls just by putting a chip in someone's brain.

(45:34):
Like put in a chip, activate the chip, and voila,
You've got a second soul, but still just one person,
so you don't get a whole new person. But from
a Christian philosophy perspective, I would argue that the soul
is the seat of one's personal identity and not the

(45:55):
other way around. So the souls the grounding of the self.
And in a way, Burt and Fields have turned this
upside down in their thinking at least, which is super strange.
And then there's this whole problem of any Bert being
in love with any Irving and being oblivious to the

(46:16):
existence of Fields, and any Burt doesn't even know who
Fields is. So wohlden that completely defeat the purpose of
their whole artificial salvation project, That's my question. So that's
just a few of the kind of conundrums that are
involved with this whole scene. But again, like I said,

(46:38):
we could do a whole series of podcasts just on
that dinner table conversation. It's so great.

Speaker 1 (46:44):
And just for our listeners. There are tons of podcasts
on severigns, whether they're on YouTube or on just regular
podcast feeds that are dissecting every part of each episode
from both of the seasons, but specifically season two. I
want to talk a little bit more with you all
about suffering and human suffering because one of the things

(47:06):
you mentioned earlier in the podcast is lumin Industries, which
has been around the fictional company for a very long time.
I think since the eighteen hundreds. They have been around,
and they their mission vision and values is kind of
to get rid of human suffering, and the severance process
will help people do that, and that's kind of how

(47:28):
they market it, I guess, to people who could get severed,
and so part of it is to relieve suffering, or
to not if you are suffering, to remove yourself from
that pain. And I heard in one of the podcasts
they were talking about Buddhism. Someone asked them if this
was like Buddhism and they said, yeah, maybe in a
way like that. To relieve yourself of this suffering to

(47:49):
no longer experience it. So there are three of the characters,
and we've alluded to two of them before, Mark s
and Irving, and then also there's another guy that's on
their team at work and his name is Dylan, and
all three of them want to get rid of this
emotional suffering in the real world. Mark his wife has
died in real life, so he's trying to get rid

(48:14):
of the grief. And so if they experience, you know,
emotional suffering on the severed floor, does severing solve their
problem of suffering? And actually in season two they do
experience some emotional things as they go, like they're outside
in as a team together, they go outside of it's like,
I don't know what it is, a camping trip and

(48:35):
there's some things that they experience there. Or do you
think that they're just replacing the suffering in the real
world with a different kind of suffering that they're experiencing,
whether it's not meeting some arbitrary goals that their team's
supposed to have, or they're confused about what they do.
It's kind of still a suffering even inside of boredom.

(48:57):
So what about that is if they're trying to replace
not having to suffer from the outside world. How can
they be completely you know, cut off from any kind
of suffering in this new consciousness there.

Speaker 3 (49:09):
Any Yeah, I'll respond to that, Melanie. I don't think
they're getting rid of suffering completely, obviously. I mean, they
do infer that the motivation for being severed for most
of the people, even maybe not for Heley or Helen Helena.
But and we don't know exactly why Irving submitted to

(49:35):
be severed. I don't think Melissa may know more about him,
but they are promised that while at work, they're anys
are blocked from remembering their specific past emotional suffering, you know,
which was what drove them to be severed in the
first place. So we're all good, that's great. They're not
remembering any of those terrible traumatic memories and grief and

(49:57):
so forth. But they're just like you said, they do
have suffering while at Lumen on the stubbed floor. I mean,
and I think as it goes on, and Melanie, Melissa
hinted that it may be getting darker as we go through,
you know, season three, it could be that their suffering

(50:19):
within Lumen is worse than what they were trying to
get of and get out of, you know, in reality,
they just for now it seems like maybe the suffering
is new and different, but not quite as bad as
what they were severed for. But especially Jimma, I think

(50:42):
Mark's Audi's wife, Jimma, who is perpetually an any and
being experimented on. I think probably she would say her
suffering within Lumen outweighed her suffering when she was a
normal person in reality. But you know, as a viewer,
just my initial response and takeaway is that merely severing

(51:06):
from reality by erasing certain memories isn't really the path
to happiness at least we're in this show. I mean,
it just definitely leaves you thinking about whether they're better off.

Speaker 2 (51:22):
Yeah, I would agree with you, Julie. One of the
things that really stands out from the beginning of the
show for me is how very dehumanized the Innis actually are.
So they have this sterile, artificial environment, they're treated very
I mean from the beginning you see that they're treated

(51:45):
a lot like laboratory rats, even down to this maze
of hallways that they have to mentally map by trial
and error, and then you know, kind of write down
directions for themselves so that they can reach their steps
to different places, and then they're rewarded with these trivial
little treats for performing as they're told to perform at works.

(52:09):
So I would totally agree that in this attempt to
escape from suffering, the Audis are placing what I think
of as anesthetized versions or again fragments of themselves into
this scenario that, even at its very best, is dehumanizing

(52:31):
and really just amounts to I think you used the
word perpetual July, this perpetual type of suffering. And as
a side note here, there was this one statement made
by mister Milchik in the second episode of season two
that I thought was absolutely fascinating. He's talking to Mark Scout,

(52:52):
the audi Mark about his any mark s and he
says to him, the soulace you have I've given him
down there will make its way to you. It just
takes time.

Speaker 1 (53:07):
And also for our listener, mister Meltchek is one of
the supervisors, and he's unsevered. He's an unsevered supervisor of
the severed floor.

Speaker 2 (53:17):
Right right, he is. He's one of my top three
favorite characters. I think he's just the best character in
the show. But anyway, I suppose the idea when Miltchik
says this is that the absence of conscious grief for
these eight hours a day that Mark s is at

(53:39):
work is somehow impacting the physical brain in a positive way,
and that over time, Mark, the Audi, Marks Scout will
benefit from the positive impact to the physical brain. That's
what I'm piecing together. I'm curious if you guys think

(53:59):
I'm on the right track with that.

Speaker 3 (54:02):
I think that is what he means that, but I
question it heavily because it's I mean, if if any
of you have gone through grief, as I would say
most everyone has a loss Mark, let's just take Mark,
because that that's the one we can relate to. Mark

(54:25):
severing would seem to just prolong his his grieving process
for Jemma, because every day at five pm, he's like
plunged into reality again, the.

Speaker 4 (54:40):
Reality he has wanted to escape from.

Speaker 3 (54:43):
So he's got to deal with it every day starting
at five o'clock, all the way until he goes to
woman again. And I don't think he deals with it.
I think he you know, he's not. There's no there's
nothing that shows that he's working through his grieving process
in reality, right, right.

Speaker 1 (55:04):
So it is interesting because you know, they're agreeing to
be severed all of the employees. We're not including another
person on their team, Helly or Helena, because we're not
really sure of her motivations, because she's actually a relative
of the people the actual corporation Lumen, the people who

(55:24):
run Lumen. But they want to be free from negative emotions.
And I'm not really sure why Dylan is being severed.
We don't give we don't have that much background on
him because in real life he has this robust life.
He's got little children, and he's married, so we're not
really sure why he did that. But they're given this
promise that they're not going to suffer, like you said,
from these various different kinds of grief or trauma or whatever.

(55:48):
But it's interesting at the very last part of season two,
there's death, there's animal death, there's all kinds of suffering
in on the severed floor. So that is really interesting
how they're going to kind of, I guess, thread that
needle in terms of it's supposed to be suffering free
and yet there were deaths or one was you find

(56:09):
out that there has been multiple animal deaths in the past,
so you just realize it's not like there's no suffering
of anything that's happening there. But what about negative emotions
like you were saying, Julie, you know, it's like he
comes back every day from work and then he's faced
again with the loss of his wife, and he's drinking
heavily in those kinds of things. But is there any

(56:30):
kind of role that negative emotions could play in terms
of our own being human in terms of human flourishing.

Speaker 2 (56:37):
And well being?

Speaker 1 (56:38):
I mean, should we want to completely never have any
kind of interaction with suffering or trauma or grief of
any kind? And what do you think would happen to
us in our humanity if we did decide to be
severed and it really worked, like you were completely removed
while suffering.

Speaker 3 (56:58):
Yeah, and of course this is we talked about earlier
that they're actually working on.

Speaker 4 (57:02):
They are working on.

Speaker 3 (57:04):
Calling up traumatic memories things like this that can that
they can erasese and abolish from our you know, memory.
And you know, I mean, who wouldn't who wouldn't be
sort of at least a little bit motivated if you
had PTSD. If you had an extremely traumatic experience that
you couldn't, you know, get over, So why not what

(57:28):
would persuade you not to be severed in other words,
to get rid of your negative emotions? Well, just the
facts are that negative emotions and like grief, sadness, anger, depression, jealousy, guilt, shame,
some of the I think people experience that anxiety, fear,

(57:52):
they're actually valuable for our well being. Two philosophers, Julian
Deanna and Fabrice Tyroni in the they have a paper
that's called Feel Bad, Live Well, and in it they
argue that negative emotions are fundamentally valuable for human flourishing.
And this is not too hard to understand or reason with.

(58:14):
But negative emotions provide information to us about the world
and ourselves. Like an example would be if we had
moral anger about something. It can draw our attention to
actively pursue genuine justice right for someone, and it helps

(58:36):
us drives how we should.

Speaker 4 (58:37):
Respond and act.

Speaker 3 (58:39):
If I experience guilt, I'm provided with a clue or
a signal that I've done something wrong. So we can't
say that they're not valuable and they don't do anything
for us. Negative emotions can initiate self reflection about our
character and then motivate me to develop virtue. So I

(59:01):
think it's very dangerous to want to even though I
would so sympathize with someone a veteran who had PTSD
and wanted to erase any of those memories. But the
fact is that we're more than just matter. So we're
more than physics and chemistry, and I think our memories

(59:23):
are not just a physical thing that can be sapped.
So I think there are other ways to deal with
negative emotions that are interrupting your life or you think
need to be erased. I don't think this is the answer,
and I think that these two philosophers are onto something

(59:44):
about trying to teach us that negative emotions actually are
valuable for our character.

Speaker 2 (59:51):
Yeah, I agree with that, Julie. I'd only add that
the experience of psychological suffering, I'd say, is in some
ways essential to the human experience in a fallen world.
So a while that, Julie and I had an interesting
conversation about the problem with using technology to just eliminate

(01:00:13):
negative emotions. So imagine imagine that scenario. Imagine that you
are unable to experience grief when someone you dearly love
passes away. Okay, think about that scenarios. Maybe the person
you love most in the world passes away very suddenly,

(01:00:36):
but because of some technology that you're using, you're not
able to experience even an inkling of grief for this loss.
So this artificial inability to grieve, I would argue, is
worse than the experience of the grief. When we're talking

(01:00:57):
about our essential humanity. I'm reminded of the novel Brave
New World, where everyone's on this medication called Soma Soma.
It's this little pink pill and everyone takes this medication
all the time because it makes them just blissfully happy,
no matter what happens in their lives. And we read

(01:01:20):
about that, and that's very much fitting with a dystopian world, right,
because intuitively we know that's not the right solution to
psychological suffering. In other words, dehumanizing ourselves is not the answer.
And I think deep down we know this, like as

(01:01:44):
a verse as we might be to the suffering, the
psychological suffering element of being a human in a fallen world,
dehumanization is not the solution.

Speaker 1 (01:01:57):
And I also think that you guys touched on you know,
when we go through suffering or just hard circumstances, that's
when the human spirit, a lot of times, whether people
are believers or unbelievers, becomes very resilient. And through that
suffering there's ways in which we encourage other people. Or

(01:02:18):
you know, any number of people who have become handicapped
and like maybe they become a paraplegic or just these
different things. I'm sure they wish they weren't, but through
their suffering they've been able to help other people too.
So it's kind of interesting to even think of the
premise of no suffering, because it seems also by the
reverse that if somebody lives a life of ease and

(01:02:39):
they've never had suffering of any kind and they just
have everything that they need, less empathetic, they're less, you
know what I mean, They just take everything for granted.
And also I read somewhere sometimes about like a lot
of companies that have become really successful years ago less now,

(01:03:00):
like someone came from a really hardship to overcome that
hardship to make this particular device or found a company
or do these things, and those kinds of things, those
big kind of things are not really born out of
just a life of ease where you have everything that
you need and no suffering. So another thing I want
to ask you too about And Melissa mentioned you love

(01:03:21):
science fiction shows, so I would like to talk to
you about just technology and ethics. We were talking about
this before that before the show is just thinking about
how less people are wanting to study liberal arts or
STEM is really emphasized. But can we really divorce technological
advances from ethics and philosophy? So why do you think

(01:03:43):
that these science fiction shows, besides being so fun to watch,
why are they valuable? I think it's probably true that,
you know, academic papers are probably not enough for the
average person to really grasp some of these things. So
what's good about some of these kinds of shows?

Speaker 3 (01:04:03):
I'll try this first. It's interesting because I wonder if
all the people who are so exciting about severance read
an academic paper on this kind of technology and the
consequence deserve whatever, they wouldn't be that excited about reading
about that, right.

Speaker 4 (01:04:20):
So TV shows films.

Speaker 3 (01:04:23):
This sci fi literature that imagine the consequences of technology.
They're actually very essential for helping us grasp the meaning
of things like a technology that is emerging it's not
here yet, so it's imagining what it could be.

Speaker 5 (01:04:42):
And C. S.

Speaker 3 (01:04:43):
Lewis calls this dipping abstract arguments in a story. So
he thought he thought we had to have logical arguments
because there's bad arguments, said, we have to have good
arguments because there's bad arguments out there.

Speaker 4 (01:04:57):
But what we really need is for.

Speaker 3 (01:04:58):
Abstract arguments to be dipped in stories so they come
back to us very powerful and clearly about the consequences.
So I like Walker Percy too because he writes something
in his essay notes for a novel about the end
of the world, and he said that sci fi novelists
are like prophets. There are canaries in a coal mine.

(01:05:21):
When a canary detects harmful conditions and cries it out
and then collapses, it's time for the miners to take
notice of what's going on. So the writer of severance,
to me, is like a prophet or a canary because
he is imagining. You know, however well he does it
what the harmful consequences are of submitting to like a

(01:05:43):
severing technology. Now it's our responsibility, responsibility to thoughtfully count
the human costs. But the writers, and especially the writer
of severance is giving us this imaginative story so that
we can grasp the meaning of it. So I think
it's essential.

Speaker 2 (01:06:03):
Yeah, I agree with Julie. I would only add this
is just a question, not a comment. I'm curious to
find out really where the show goes from here in
this regard if they're going to try to say, well,
it's because of the corruption at the high corporate levels

(01:06:25):
that the science is misused, not that there's an intrinsic
danger or anything intrinsically wrong with the science and the
technology itself. So that's just my outstanding question mark about
what the show's writers are going to do from here.

Speaker 3 (01:06:43):
Yeah, of course the misuse of technology, you know, imagining
that a technology could be misused then would give you
pause to whether we should develop it, right, So even then, yeah,
I think it's valuable.

Speaker 1 (01:07:03):
Well, and I also think that technology is developing faster
than we can keep up with, especially with AI. And
I don't know if people have thought through all the ramifications,
whether you know, we can argue it will never philosophically
become sentient or something like that, but even if it could,
we we're not really thinking through all the applications of

(01:07:24):
all these different kinds of technologies, and that's something that
the average person interacts with every day. I mean, if
everyone has a smartphone, they interact with AI, either through
Google or Siri, or maybe you'd have Alexa in your home.
So everyone is interacting with it, even at the most
basic if you're not asking it questions. Everyone uses it

(01:07:46):
for maps or knows someone who uses it for apps.
There's driving someone who's using AI for maps. So we're
all interacting with these technologies. But really, have we thoughtfully
thought about what are the ethics behind some of these things?
And so how should you know? Some of these different
technologies might be super far out to us now, like Severance,

(01:08:09):
But honestly, the iPhone was invented in two thousand and seven.
I don't think any of us in two thousand and
seven would have thought we're not going to use Thomas
Guide Brothers maps anymore. We're not, you know, we're going
to have phones. Everyone's going to have a phone in
their pocket, even if they live in more of a
remote village in Africa. Everyone's going to have these things.
I don't think we really realize how fast technology is moving.

(01:08:31):
So how can the Christian or the Christian apologists think
through some of the ethics behind some of all of
this that's just coming up, even if it is quote
unquote not possible today. I don't know if you have
seen some of those older movies. I don't know if
it's even two thousand and one Space Odyssey or the
one I was thinking of is what's the one that
was based on a novel? Is based on a Philip

(01:08:54):
Dick novel? And then Tom Cruise was in that. Do
you remember which one that was where they had those
different like ai things in the water are these butork orange?
It was a different one that Tom Cruise was in it.
But anyway, part of it, like cars would drive up
sides of roads and stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:09:11):
I mean, oh wait, was that Minority Report?

Speaker 4 (01:09:14):
Oh yeah, yeah, as remember.

Speaker 1 (01:09:15):
In Minority Report he was walking by billboards that were
starting to give him ads specifically for him. Now, this
was based on a you know, short story that's written
in the nineteen sixties, and you're just like, that is nuts,
that's never gonna happen. Well, that's what we're dealing with now,
and that movie was That's what I asked me this
question because we think, okay, Severence is too far out there,

(01:09:38):
but just think how far like this stuff that Philip
Dick thought was kind of wild, and then we saw
this sci fi movie in the nineties and now it's here,
Like we get onto our computer and everything is depending
on where we went. There goes the billboard or there
goes the ad that is specifically, it's no longer sci fi.

Speaker 4 (01:09:56):
You're so right.

Speaker 3 (01:09:58):
Wait, we just read a short story at the Society
for Women of Letters, The Machine Stops, and it was
written in nineteen oh nine. Melanie, you would love it
and it is very relevant. So yeah, so how do.

Speaker 1 (01:10:12):
We prepare ourselves to think about all these you know,
we see this, we think, oh, that's never going to happen,
and yet here it is at our door as Christians?
How do we process all of this?

Speaker 3 (01:10:22):
Yeah, well, I'll start and then Melissa can can add
something to First of all, it's true that I think
our culture equates technology with progress, So that's kind of
a given.

Speaker 2 (01:10:38):
And so.

Speaker 3 (01:10:40):
It also seems like tech innovators, tech research, especially AI researchers.

Speaker 4 (01:10:45):
Seem to be unstoppable.

Speaker 3 (01:10:47):
And haven't you ever heard futuristic or even just regular
people say well, if we can do something, we should
do it. If we can do it technologically, well we should,
you know, if we can erase memories, we should be
able to do that. And I immediately think if there's
a meme that says the science department says they can

(01:11:08):
clone a t rex, and the Humanities department will tell
you why that's a bad idea, you know. And so
that's our responsibility is too critique emerging technologies as best
we can with Now, I have a theory about why

(01:11:29):
technology goes and checked like this and not ethically critique
and everything. I think it's because most people are in
the technology field.

Speaker 4 (01:11:38):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:11:38):
I'm not a brain neurosurgeon, I'm not a cognitive science
I'm not an AI researcher. But as Melissa and I
have talked, it's okay not to understand everything about a
new technology because they're operating on a philosophy. In this case,

(01:11:58):
severance narrative is operating on a philosophy of human persons,
and it's a materialist philosophy. And so it makes that
that everything technology can solve as long as it's physics
and chemistry or material or DNA or neurons firing in
your brain. But if human persons are more than physics

(01:12:20):
in chemistry, and if happiness and well being are more
than genetically controlled just biochemistry and neurons firing in your brain,
then it's easy for us to critique and say, well,
a brain chip that erases your bad memories can't be
a solution for that, for that kind of happiness that

(01:12:40):
we're we're yearning for, and it can lead to dangerous
and extreme absurdities. So I guess what I'm saying is
we have to be able to critique the philosophy that
underlies the technology.

Speaker 4 (01:12:55):
Most of the time.

Speaker 3 (01:12:55):
It's materialism, especially if they're talking about applying technology to
human persons. If they think you're just physics and chemistry,
then they are sure that their technology will do whatever
the physical thing they want to do. But if we're
not just physics and chemistry, then it is liable to

(01:13:17):
be a train wreck.

Speaker 2 (01:13:19):
So yeah, I'm reminded of CS Lewis's words about sometimes
at the most progress you can make is to turn
back around and go back the way you came and
choose a different path. Right, because he calls it the
great myth right capital G, capital M. The great myth,

(01:13:42):
which is this myth that progress is always good, right,
We're always getting better, and so this would also apply
to technology. And by the way, C. S. Lewis explored
this in his third book of his Ransom trilogy, which
is entitled That Hideous Strength, where just because you can

(01:14:05):
do it does not mean you should. And the more
I've thought about this, the more I've wondered if this
is really one of the one of the elements of
human hubris. Right, It's like, Okay, we have the power
to do this thing, to achieve this technological quote unquote advancement,

(01:14:30):
and so we need to do it so that we
can prove that we can. It's like it's one more
block on the whole jinga tower of the edifice of
human achievement, is the way I think about it. So
like there's this hubris, this pride, driving us to just

(01:14:52):
show that we can do it, you know, an achievement
in the realm of technology. And I think that that's
a lot of what drives people to just full steam
ahead with completely disregard for the ethical ramifications or any
of the very bad things that could result from the

(01:15:14):
misuse of some such technology.

Speaker 1 (01:15:19):
In Passing, Julie mentioned like bringing back a t rex.
But actually, I don't know if our listeners know. There
is a biotechnology firm the United States called Colossal and
they've raised over four hundred million dollars to do just that.
They're going, oh, yeah, to bring back the Dodo bird
and some various different extinct animals that they have to.

Speaker 3 (01:15:42):
So yeah, I was going to mention that because it's
called de extinction. Yes, extinction they've done it with supposedly,
I mean you would have to. There's a nuanced thing
about it. But is it the dire wolves.

Speaker 4 (01:15:56):
They've done that, Yes, the dire wolves.

Speaker 3 (01:15:58):
Yeah, And so they want to bring back previously lost
species through cloning, back breeding, and genome editing. So as
crazy as that sounds, I mean that meme I said,
as an old meme, you know, but it's coming to pass,
So it's crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:16:16):
Yeah, it's very interesting. Well, I want to wrap this
discussion up by asking you just about how the Christian
apologist can use some of these science fiction stories that
we're hearing in severance and use them as a springboard
to talk about the truth of Christianity. I mean, definitely,

(01:16:38):
it's a very grim show in some ways. The town
that they live in the audis live in. As you
see some of the Audi lives, it seems very depressing.
They don't have much community. They're just kind of almost
sleep walking through their lives. Things seem quite bleak there.
And so how can we use this show, which everyone
loves and is just kind of obsessing over and rewatching

(01:17:01):
and listening to podcasts about, as a tool for the
Christian apologist.

Speaker 2 (01:17:07):
So I'm going to make a very premature prediction about
the show. This is what I'm hoping will eventually happen. So, Melanie,
I love your use of the word bleak, because that's
the word that comes to my mind every time I
watch the show. There's a bleakness in the real world,
but there's a comparable, just different kind of bleakness on

(01:17:31):
the severed floor of Lumen. And what I'm hoping is
that when the show comes full circle, that we will
be able to look at the story arc from the
perspective of cultural apologetics or imaginative apologetics more specifically, and say,
here we have a fantastic example of what the dichotomy

(01:17:58):
looks like between disenchantment, which is a big buzzword in
the cultural apologetics world these days, disenchantment and re enchantment.
So that's sort of a side thing that I'm hoping for.
We'll see how it all pans out in the end.
But in general, I would say that science fiction as
a genre is I would argue, the most useful of

(01:18:21):
them all, whether it's literature, film, or television when it
comes to usefulness in imaginative apologetics. So for listeners that
may not know this, science fiction is historically considered a
subgenre of fantasy, and if you think about it, it
makes total sense. But particularly in our technology driven society,

(01:18:45):
where science is considered by many to be the epitome
of human knowledge and achievement, science fiction can actually be
tremendously helpful in sparking the kinds of conversations that out
to be very productive in an apologetic sense. Part of
being human, I would argue, is this powerful intuition that

(01:19:08):
there are things that are more important than scientific progress,
and even more important than utilitarian attempts to improve the
human condition one way or the other. Clearly, as I
said earlier, there are dehumanizing aspects of some technologies, technologies
that are actually designed to alleviate physical suffering. So when

(01:19:32):
we see these kinds of ideas playing out in the
form of stories, especially stories with characters that we strongly
resonate with in one way or another. What happens is
we naturally become fascinated with the human dimension that's part
of the broader story that includes the theoretical science, and

(01:19:55):
that gets us really thinking more philosophically about things like
what is a human person and what is permissible? And
this is the point of interface that we as Christians
can really capitalize on when we have conversations with non
believers about a show like Severance. So it gives us

(01:20:15):
this really fun common ground on which to meet a
fellow human being and encourage them to start thinking more
deeply about the implications of stories like what we find
in Severance.

Speaker 3 (01:20:31):
Yeah, I agree with everything Melissa said. I also think
just the themes that we discussed today are themes that
just the average person can think through. Since they've got
the structure of the show in their mind and having
watched it and and sort of envisioned what the technology does,

(01:20:53):
they can more easily imagine the dehumanizing consequences. And one
thing we mentioned before was the use of technology, because
I think scientists and researchers don't necessarily think about bad
actors or bad certain you know, bad people using the

(01:21:14):
technology bad. And I think that's because and I don't
know if any of the writers or are Christians or not,
but they don't have any solution for the sinful human condition, right,
And so it crops up in sci fi a lot.
The misuse of technology is usually from bad actors. Right,

(01:21:38):
Not that the technology can't be inherently bad too, but
that you add that you have allumen, you know, controllers involved,
and you can really see that what we really need
is a solution for our sin, which we have in Christianity,
in christ But also, just like Melissa said, take stock
of how do you handle negative emotions and grief and

(01:22:03):
things like that and bad memories? You know, do you
want to just take a pill or get rid of
them through technology? So these are really good questions for
people to ask themselves and answer.

Speaker 1 (01:22:16):
Well, this has been a fun conversation today about all
these different issues as it relates to severance. But finally,
on a much lighter fun note, I have questions for
each of you. Well, Julie is new to this podcast,
so I have to ask her our normal questions for
new guests. Well, first of all, Julie, would you say
you're an early bird or a night oul?

Speaker 4 (01:22:38):
Early bird?

Speaker 1 (01:22:39):
And what is your favorite meal?

Speaker 4 (01:22:42):
Hmm, I have no idea. I don't have a bat.
I'm so sick of making dinners and food at my house. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:22:53):
Well for Melissa, I have It's almost summer, Melissa, so
would you rather go swimming at the beach or at
a lake?

Speaker 3 (01:23:01):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:23:02):
At the beach because there's fish. There's lots of colorful fish.

Speaker 1 (01:23:06):
Well, thanks Melissa and Julie for being a guest today
on the Postmodern Realities podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:23:12):
Thanks Melanie, thanks you so much.

Speaker 1 (01:23:14):
Fun. You've been listening to episode four hundred and forty
four of the Christian Research Journal's Postmodern Realities podcast. Today's
guests were doctor Melissa Kane Travis and doctor Julie Miller.
We've been talking about season two of Apple TV Plus's Severance.
Melissa has written our main article on this television series.

(01:23:36):
It's called Persons Don't Disintegrate Apple TV's Severance and the
Continuity Identity Problem. In addition, we have an article that
goes along with it by doctor Julie Miller. You can
read both of those articles for free without any paywall
at equipp dot org. That's equip dot org.

Speaker 5 (01:23:55):
You won't want to miss out on subscribing to the
other podcasts from the Christian Research Institute. We have the
Bible answer Man podcast, which is published Monday through Friday,
with the best of the week on Saturday. It's hosted
by CRI President Hank Handagraph and is available wherever you
get your favorite podcasts. In addition, Hank has a podcast

(01:24:18):
called Hank Unplugged. Hank takes you out of the studio
and into his study to engage in free flowing, essential
Christian conversations on critical issues with some of the most interesting,
informative and inspirational people on the planet. And you won't
want to miss out on the brand new podcast from

(01:24:38):
the Christian Research Journal. Christian Research Journal Reads presents audio
versions of Christian Research Journal articles. It was a print
incarnation of almost forty five years. It's now on the
web as you know, with new articles every single week,
So you won't want to miss these audio articles of
some of our most popular and most access articles on

(01:25:01):
our website, equip dot org.