So, I watched Season 1 of the TV show Severance not long ago. I’ll have much more to say about the show later. But for now, a quote from one of the characters jumped out to me.
For anyone not familiar with Severance, the characters in this fictional world can separate their personal lives from their work lives via surgery. While they’re at work, they know nothing about their lives on the outside. And while they’re not at work, they know nothing about what they do at work. But Reghabi, a surgeon who can reverse the severance procedure, criticizes the main character of the show, who’s had the procedure done to him, in the following way:
You brought him into this world without his permission, based on your own desire for emotional convenience.
Fair enough, right? Everyone who undergoes the severance procedure creates a new consciousness – their self at work – that didn’t exist before the procedure, lives an extremely limited life, and had zero choice in the matter.
Severance and Raising Children
However, the more I thought about the quote, the more troubling it became. After all, how, exactly, is this any different from the decision to have children? Children have no choice in the matter. They didn’t decide to be brought into the world. In many ways, they lead a very limited life under the domination of their parents, especially in the first decade or so.
It’s not that there aren’t any differences. Children, for example, have much greater potential to life a full, complete life than the kind of stunted workplace consciousness that the severance procedure creates. But it takes a bit of work to get to this conclusion. And if you think ‘choice’ is the most important factor, then having children really isn’t different at all from severance.
After all, no one chose to be born. And while many people have noble reasons for wanting children, plenty of people have worse reasons.
