What it means to say ‘me’
A short reflection on personhood
Having spent this past weekend watching Apple TV’s sci-fi thriller movie Severance, I’ve been doing what was presumably one of the aims of the show: engaging in robust philosophical reflection on the nature of human identity.
These reflections are almost inevitable given the premise of the show. In an unspecified future, a mysterious company hires employees who volunteer to undergo a brain surgery that allows for their work experiences to be separate from their memories, effectively ‘severing’ themselves from their work life.
This setup works well for the employees who originally agreed to it, and who henceforth come to be known as the ‘outies’. Almost as soon as they enter the elevator on their way to the office, they suddenly experience themselves walking out of it. The whole workday has passed outside of their awareness, none of it having been saved in their memory.
But things are very much different for the so-called ‘innies’. They experience themselves as having been ‘born’ into the office on their first day of work, with complete amnesia about the rest of their life. And because their ‘outies’ continue coming into the office, they experience day after day of work, still in complete darkness about the ‘outside world’.
