And so from the larger frame, it's really fascinating because I don't think I've ever seen a series or a story where the absurdity of what you're noticing is entertaining, you know, because absurdity can be funny and entertaining, but it's also completely reasonable from the larger frame, because we, the viewer, are meant to experience the severance ourselves, right? And so we're watching this, and we're experiencing a kind of disconnection and confusion, right, but also wonder.

This is Jonathan Pejot.

Welcome to the symbolic world. For quite a while now, several people that I know and trust and like have been encouraging me to watch the show Severance.

And at first when people presented the concept to me,

which is basically the idea that like in a science fiction world,

people are able to sever themselves between their work persona

and the rest of their life, and the people in the work persona don't know

and don't remember the rest of their life, and the people in the rest of the life don't know and don't have any memories or connection to their persona and at first I thought what a strange idea for a show I don't know why that would be interesting but after much insistence I decided to watch it and realize that it is actually a really wonderful exploration of how identity functions, you know, and how identities, hierarchies work, especially how what happens when a hierarchy becomes dysfunctional and what happens when there is a break between the different levels of a hierarchy of a system,

both in terms of a social system, but obviously the hierarchy that also exists within us.

The first thing to say, which I was really surprised to see that this show came out, and

it was filmed during COVID, it came out, and it was filmed during COVID.

It came out, what, in 2022, I guess.

And it's just very odd to watch a show that was filmed during COVID

be about a biotech technology that secretly controls

your narrative and isolates you from,

you know, you're the full story and the meaning of life.

And it's just very odd to realize that this was filmed during COVID.

And I wonder if the people who are wearing masks and doing all of this distancing during COVID realized that they were participating in a form of severance while they were making it, you know, not sure.

And so the main character is Mark and we're going to try to follow his story mostly because we could kind of follow different threads.

But I think that, you know, he of course, because he's the main character, he is, We're going to try to follow his story mostly because we could kind of follow different threads.

But I think that he, of course, because he's the main character, he is a microcosm of the whole question of severance.

And it's very interesting to see that, you know, the severance starts even before the severance in the brain, right? And so the reason why Mark is performing this severance in his life is because his wife died.

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