By Haoran Xia
Published on: DeepFocus
March 23, 2025
In modern society, the central myth surrounding work lies in the belief that work is the sole path to self-realization.
In other words, work itself is treated as the meaning of our existence within contemporary industrial society—to work is to exist. In a world where social structures have become infinitely professionalized (a process not achieved overnight, but perfected through centuries of accumulation within the capitalist system), whether in Western or Asian societies, in the Global North or South, “life” depends on “work” for its economic foundation. Every aspect of life is rendered concrete through numbers and units: yearly rent, six-months insurance, one winter coat, a thirty-year mortgage. Gradually, the core of life begins to orbit around work and the “career” that work promises. Work—an activity that is simultaneously personal and social—becomes the absolute measure of a person’s value, identity, class, economic status, and self-recognition. And this is precisely capitalism’s ultimate objective: the complete objectification of human beings into labor, the full equivalence between a person’s value and their productive capacity, and the alignment of existence itself with work.
Within this vast and boundless capitalist system, capital is omnipresent, and so are the temptations embedded within it. These temptations numb everyone. On one hand, they allow us to indulge in the “pleasures” capitalism offers—consumption, services, power, the illusion of class mobility. On the other hand, they quietly rewrite the rules by which the world operates, reorganizing everything around time, money, production, and labor. This is an extremely dangerous system. Its danger does not lie in the phenomena we already recognize and critique, but rather in the fact that, for many people, the system itself is invisible. It has become inertia, like gravity—pervasive, unquestioned, existing as naturally as a scientific law within everyday life. And breaking inertia is almost impossible. Severance tells precisely such a story—a story about breaking inertia.
Severance is a dystopian series developed by Apple TV+ that premiered in 2022. In the show, the protagonist Mark S (hereafter referred as ‘Mark’). works for a company called Lumon, which has developed a memory-severance technology. This technology implants a chip into certain employees’ brains, causing them to forget everything outside of work while they are working, and everything about work once they leave. Thus, a “work self” - innie and an “outside self” -outtie are created. Mark is one of these severed employees. At the end of the first season, Mark and three of his colleagues—Helly, Dylan, and Irving—temporarily awaken as their innie attempt to expose the brutality hidden beneath this seemingly efficient and beneficial technology. But time runs out. Within moments, they are switched back to their outtie, forgetting their mission entirely. The second season begins after this forced return.
The series succeeds for many reasons: its futuristic dystopian narrative, its refined retro aesthetics, its symbolic spatial design, and its carefully composed cinematography. But its most distinctive and compelling element is the creation of the severance technology itself. This is a topic deeply intertwined with our lives, embedded in our daily conversations and in our constant reflections on work. As discussed earlier, the modern myth of work is constructed around a capitalist “fact”: we work, therefore we exist. Yet the lie of work lies in this—what work demands, displays, and realizes is only a fragment of who we are as human beings. This fragment may be a skill or an interest we possess, but once placed within the capitalist system, it is transformed into labor power.
Two centuries ago, Marx dismantled the “truth” of capitalist society in Das Capital: labor power, once exercised, becomes productive force; productive force materializes in commodities as use value; and through exchange, this productive force is ultimately converted into money, realizing its final value within the capitalist system. Within this chain of equivalences, human beings are alienated the moment they enter the system. All value and function are reduced to a single technical capacity. The human becomes mechanical, lifeless, production-oriented. Value is replaced by use value; existence, in its human sense, is imprisoned by work and production. Time—the most essential unit of life—is equated with money. Every second of breathing produces or consumes capital. Life becomes code, a fixed program. Emotions, sensations, and feelings—precisely because they affect labor and productivity—become capitalism’s enemy. Capitalism fantasizes about erasing all structures of humanity tied to emotion. Lumon’s severance technology fulfills this fantasy perfectly.
In psychoanalytic terms, memory forms the foundation of consciousness. When memory is stripped away and the individual loses sovereignty over it, consciousness becomes fragmented, incomplete, and identity splits in two. The division between innie and outtie represent capitalism’s cruelty at its extreme: the complete transformation of the human into a tool of production. This design not only reinforces the doctrine that “work equals existence,” but also presents a plausible alternative world—one frighteningly close to our own—where a new possibility emerges: human existence itself can be reproduced.
Let’s return to capitalism’s core equation—labor, production, exchange, value—human beings are the fundamental unit enabling this system. Severance disrupts this logic. When existence can be externally reproduced, production transcends biological and mathematical limits. No matter how depressed or broken outtie may be, the system can always regenerate a functioning innie. Production and reproduction collapse into one. Emotional interference is eliminated. Labor is guaranteed. Capitalism’s equation is not only stabilized, but optimized. The human is fully reduced to a production apparatus, endlessly functioning without feeling or consciousness.
Beyond this, severance reintroduces the ancient philosophical problem of dualism—work versus life. Western philosophy has long struggled with binary frameworks, from Apollo and Dionysus to modern gender theory. Despite efforts to escape dualism, reality remains brutal. Work and life, online and offline, political parties, Apple and Android—modern existence is structured through a binary structure. This is not a choice, but a consequence of social design. Modern society prioritizes efficiency and profit, offering choices only to maximize productivity. Time and machinery bind capitalism and modernity together, constructing what Deleuze called a “society of control.” Control becomes inertia, a truth, a rule. Mark’s severance appears extreme, yet our own lives are already divided—normalized fragmentation has become the rule.
The season finale crystallizes capitalism’s ultimate aesthetic. We learn the meaning of “Cold Harbor.” We witness Mark’s reunion with Gemma. Before this, Gemma completes the final stage of perfecting her innie: dismantling a crib. A symbol of a past miscarriage, the crib embodies trauma. As Gemma dismantles it mechanically, devoid of emotion, Lumon’s CEO whispers, “Beautiful.”
At the foundation of capitalist aesthetics lies the machine; at its core, reification; and as its standard, cruelty. In a reality governed by capitalism, the form of beauty pursued by capital and technology is never broad, artistic, or humanistically enlightening. Instead, it is a beauty rooted in function, utility, production, and efficiency. This alienated form of beauty is mechanical, devoid of emotion, and incapable of producing emotion. It is akin to Jamie Eagan’s reflection on Gemma’s mechanical behavior: pure, mechanical functional beauty is the ultimate aesthetic ideal longed for by both capital and technology.
This aesthetic is equally manifested in Lumon’s interior design within the series. Grid-like functional office desks; employees completely separated by small cubicles; time and space compressed. Windowless floors prevent natural light from penetrating; “severed” employees are unable to distinguish day from night through perception or vision. Time is digitized, artificial light reigns supreme. Uniform floors, pristine corridors, maze-like spatial layouts—all of these spatial designs serve a single purpose: function and efficiency.
Within this cruel environment where function and efficiency are paramount, the capitalist doctrine of “reifying humans as tools of production” combines with a “mechanical aesthetic of cruelty” to produce a new kind of office space—a space designed explicitly for discipline. In this space, discipline is omnipresent. Every layout, every corridor, every desk, every beam of light exists for a reason: to construct an absolute, emotionless, and cold environment. The discipline generated by such an environment follows each employee everywhere, because wherever they go, they are being disciplined by doctrines hidden within spatial functionality itself.
This discipline produces a form of behavioral inertia within space. Such inertia compels employees to perform identical actions in identical locations, to generate identical thoughts in identical places, assigning each location the meaning it is “supposed” to have. Over time, this behavioral inertia becomes embedded in the brain, forming new memories for employees who possess a “work persona.” These new memories gradually transform into cognitive inertia, and once cognitive inertia solidifies, it signifies the complete realization of space’s normative function. Such office spaces are no different from the prisons described by Foucault—perhaps the only distinction being that employees with a “work persona” are, to some extent, made to believe that all of this is normal, whereas prisoners are fully aware that it is their punishment.
None of this, of course, is normal.
Kafka once wrote in The Trial that being governed by unknown rules is an extraordinarily painful experience.
The modern condition, however, is not confined to work alone. If we speak only of labor, our understanding of modern life remains dangerously partial. The true delusion of modernity lies elsewhere: we believe that our lives are exactly as they ought to be. Behind this widespread, uncritical belief hides a series of enormous, invisible political and economic traps.
The “life” presented by modern society is one we have been familiar with since we were born. It is deeply rooted in our memory, and we often follow it without reflection, naively assuming it to be the truth of modern existence. Yet when a phenomenon or an object is easily placed before you, it signifies three things: 1/that it has been tested repeatedly, refined to meet your basic needs without provoking excessive complaint; 2/that it is a product—something manufactured rather than natural, selected, filtered, and ultimately not eliminated; 3/that its purpose is to make you believe in it—not only in its appearance, but more importantly in the values it embodies (these same rules apply to consumerism, where desire far exceeds one’s capacity for control).
Modern life itself has undergone centuries of refinement and elimination. It has circulated endlessly through capitalism, social structures, consumerism, reification, and alienation—through every phenomenon centered on capital—until what finally appears before us is its most “perfect” form. And this perfection represents the ultimate manifestation of modern society’s violence: reification, alienation, discipline, and finally—normalization.
作者：夏浩然
发表于：深焦DeepFocus
二零二五 三月二十三日
在现代社会，我们对于工作的迷思在于：工作是实现自我价值的唯一途径。
换而言之，工作本身意味着我们在当下工业社会存在的意义——工作即存在。在如今社会结构被无限职业化的当下，（职业化这个现象本身并非通过一天或短暂时间而实现，而是通过资本主义系统几百年的积累并得到完善），无论是西方或亚洲社会，北半球或南北球，’生活’本身依赖着’工作’从而得到经济支持，’生活’的方方面面被数字和单位具象化：一年房租，半年保险，一件大衣，五年房贷——久而久之，生活的核心围绕工作以及通过工作可实现的’事业’所展开，工作这个同时兼备个人性及社会性的行为成为定义一个人价值、身份、阶级、经济地位以及自我认同的绝对要素。而这正是资本主义的终极目的：人被彻底物化为劳动力，人的价值彻底等同于人的生产价值，以及人的存在与工作划上等号。在这个庞大无边的资本主义系统里，无处不在的资本以及存在于资本系统里的诱惑麻痹着所有人，他们一方面让我们享受资本主义所带来的“快感”：消费，服务，权力，跨越阶级；同时，他们改变着这个世界运行的规则，让一切围绕时间、金钱、生产和劳动力运行。
这是一个十分危险的系统。他的危险性并不在于以上（已知的）我们所探讨的现象，而在于对于很多人而言，这个系统本身的存在是未知的——他已经成为一种惯性，如同地心引力，广泛地、犹如科学规则一般地存在于我们的生活里。而打破惯性，又是一件几乎不可能的事情。《人生切割术》则讲述了一个’打破惯性’的故事。
《人生切割术》是由Apple TV开发，开播于2022年的反乌托邦剧集。在剧集里，主人公马克·S（以下简称马克）在一家名为卢蒙的企业工作。卢蒙开发了一项记忆分离技术，这项技术在部分员工的大脑里植入一块芯片，被植入芯片的员工在工作时不会记得工作之外的任何事情，而当他们离开工作时，他们不会记得任何在工作上发生的事情，从而延展出“工作人格”和“日常人格”。马克正是有这样双重人格的员工之一。
在第一季结尾，马克与他团队的三位同事（同时拥有双重人格）：赫利、迪伦和欧文以’工作人格’的身份出现在他们的日常生活中，告知大众：这项看似高效有利的’分割’技术实际残酷无比，不过时间有限，分秒之内，他们的’工作人格’被切换为’日常人格’，使他们忘记了他们原本的任务。第二季则开始于他们被切换回’日常人格’之后发生的故事。
这部剧集的成功有许多因素：未来主义/反乌托邦式的故事，精致独特的复古美学，包含各种隐喻的空间设计和情节叙述，充满巧思的摄影布局等等，不过最值得探讨，也是最独特的因素则是创造并建立双重人格的’记忆分离’技术。
这是一个与我们生活息息相关的话题，他存在于我们的日常对话之中，同时也存在于我们每天对于工作的思考之中。正如前文所探讨，在现代社会，我们对于工作的迷思在于，资本主义系统构造了一个’事实’，即我们工作，我们存在。但“工作”这个现象/行为的谎言在于，’工作’所展现/体现/需要/实现的’我们’只是我们—作为人—的一小部分。这一小部分可是我们所擅长的技术或我们的兴趣爱好，但当这项技术被放置进资本主义系统里时，它则变为劳动力。
马克思早在两百年前在《资本论》中打破资本主义社会的’真相’：劳动力在实现劳动本身后转化为生产力，生产力在商品中产生并实现它的使用价值，而在最终资本交易时，生产力则转变为金钱，实现它在资本主义系统里的终极价值。在这一长串的等式中，人在进入资本主义系统的那一瞬间则被异化：他的所有价值和所有功能被一项单一的技术所取代，他彻底成为一项机械的、没有生命力的、专注于生产的劳动力；他的价值(value)被他的使用价值(use of value)所取缔；他的存在，人性意义上的存在被’工作’和’生产’禁锢；他生命中最重要、最必要的单位：时间，与金钱划上等号，每一分每一秒的呼吸都在创造/消耗资本——他的生命成为一种代码(code)、一种固定化的程序(program)；他的情绪，他的感受，他的感官以及他的情感是影响他劳动、影响他生产并且影响他创造使用价值的绝对因素。因此，情绪、感官和感受成为资本主义系统的天敌，资本主义所幻想的是泯灭一切与情绪所挂钩的人性结构。卢蒙的’分离’技术则完美契合了资本主义系统剥削人的所有需求。
在心理分析领域，记忆是人构造意识的基础，而当记忆被剥夺，人失去支配自我记忆的权力，这意味着人的意识变得不完整，成为碎片，这同时意味着，人的人格被一分为二。’工作人格’和’日常人格’的设定将资本主义的罪恶体现到极致：使人彻底物化为劳动的生产工具。这一设定不仅进一步证实了“工作即存在”这一核心资本主义教条，同时，它将人一分为二，向我们展示一个另类世界，一个极可能发生于当下社会的世界，而在这个世界里，一种可能性被提供——人的存在能够得到再生产。
让我们回到资本主义的核心等式：劳动-生产-交易-价值。在这一等式中，劳动与生产同时产生自人本身，即意味着，人这个单位是使得这一等式发生的基本/核心要素。现在让我们再回到卢蒙’分离技术’：当人的存在能够通过外界技术得到再生产，即意味着“生产”这个现象本身突破了生命和数学的边界（无论我的日常人格有多么沮丧，多么抑郁——好比马克，我同样能够将自己进行分离，再生产一个另类的自己，这样，即便日常人格的我无法工作，我/资本主义系统仍拥有“工作人格”的我，我的生产和我的劳动则永远不会受到影响）；这一突破同时意味着，生产与再生产（这两个本完全不相同的现象）在人作为劳动力的现象里合二为一，来自于外界的任何因素，比如情绪、感受、情感被彻底排除，人作为劳动力这一提前设定得到了完全保障。这时，在分离技术的保护下，资本主义的核心等式进一步得到稳固，甚至得到优化，因为在新的等式里，人被分离，他的劳动力与生产力合二为一，他被彻底沦为纯粹的生产工具，完成接连不断的生产任务，毫无情绪，毫无感知。
劳动与生产合并为一只是分离技术体现的一方面，另一方面，这项技术将剧集的核心话题——工作与生活——带回至古老的二元化讨论角度中。我之所以说“二元化”古老，是因为在西方哲学体系中，’二元’这一定义始终存在于对人性的讨论中。从古典希腊哲学（太阳神与酒神）谈起，到近代的性别研究（男性/女性/无性别）逐渐打破二元格局，西方哲学在很长一段时间内始终无法跳出二元角度。
不过即便学术界或艺术界尝试突破二元局限，现实往往更加惨烈：生活与工作是现代人所需要面对的基本二元结构；社交媒体的出现将生活和意识形态分化为线下与线上这一二元结构；政治选举（特别以美国为例）总是存在于两个党派之间；即便是最基本的生活细节：苹果与安卓，我们始终处于一种二元状态。
处于一种二元状态并不是现代人的选择，而是现代社会结构所造成的结果。现代社会结构追求效率与利益，换而言之，在最短时间内追求最大利益，从而实现这样的目的，现代社会所需要的则是提供选择，让大众在众多选择之间选择最大利益化/最高效率的解决方案，这样，现代社会消耗最低成本，运用最短时间，达到最大利益。现代社会与资本主义在时钟与机械被发明的那一瞬间便逐渐亲密合作，他们构造一个巨大、隐形的现代监狱，将当下这个世界转化为德勒兹笔下的’控制性社会’(society of control)。在这个’控制性社会’里，人所到之处被资本、权力、利益和效率所掌控；这样的控制性已经成为当下社会的运作惯性，它是一种规则，一个事实，一个真相。所以，或许马克经历着十分痛苦的’分割’体验，他的工作人格尝试打破这一局限，但更加讽刺的是，现实生活中的我们早已被分割，或者说，被分割已是常态。
剧集中将被分割这一技术/资本主义终极目的展现地淋漓尽致的则是在季终集。在季终集，我们终于知道了’冷港’的意义，我们也终于看到马克与杰玛重逢。不过在马克找到杰玛之前，杰玛正在经历她完善’工作人格’的最后一步实现：拆解婴儿床。在第七集回顾里，我们得知杰玛曾经经历过一次流产，而那次流产成为了她与马克关系中的一个痛点，而婴儿床则成为一个代表这段痛苦回忆的符号。让杰玛再一次面对，甚至拆解婴儿床是将她带向她记忆最痛苦的地方，而当杰玛像一个机器人一般拆解婴儿床，没有任何感知上的反应时，卢蒙CEO杰米·伊根感叹道：“太美了”。
资本主义美学的底层是机械，核心是物化，标准则是残酷。在资本主义统领的现实世界里，资本与技术所追求的美当然不是广泛的、艺术性的、对人性具有启蒙意义的美，他们所追求的美体现在功能，功效，生产与效率上。这样异化的美是机械的，没有情绪的，也是不会产生情绪的。好比杰米·伊根对于杰玛机械行为的感叹：纯粹机械式的功能美是资本与技术所向往的终极美学。这样的美学同样体现在剧集里卢蒙的室内设计：方格功能性办公桌，每一位员工被一间小方格彻底分隔，时间和空间被压缩；没有窗户的楼层，自然光无法渗透，被’分割’员工无法通过感知和视觉辨别白天黑夜，时间被数字化，人造光统领一切；整齐划一的楼层，干净利落的走廊，犹如迷宫一般的楼层分布，这一切的空间设计实现着同一个目的：功能与效率。
在以功能与效率至上的残酷环境中，“物化人为生产工具”这一资本主义教条与“机械残酷美学”营造了一个全新的办公空间——一个以规训为目的的空间则诞生了。在这个空间里，规训(discipline)无处不在。这种空间里的每一项设计，每一条走廊，每一个办公桌，以及每一束光线都有它存在的意义，即营造一个绝对的、没有任何情绪的冷酷环境。这样的环境所产生的规训跟随着每一位员工，因为在员工所到之处，他们正在被隐藏在空间功能之中的教条所规训。
这样规训在空间中生产出一种行为惯性，这样的行为惯性促使员工在相同地点做出相同动作，并在相同地点产生相同思维，让每一个地点都拥有它’应该拥有’的意义。久而久之，行为惯性根植于大脑中，他们成为拥有’工作人格’员工的新记忆，这样的新记忆转为一种思维惯性，当思维惯性逐渐成型时，即意味空间的规性性质得到彻底实现。这样的办公空间与福柯笔下的监狱没有差别，或许唯一的差别在于，拥有’工作人格’的员工在某一程度上意味这一切是正常的，而监狱里的囚犯则知道这是他们的惩罚。
这一切当然不正常。
卡夫卡在《审判》说写道：被未知的规则所统治是一件让人非常痛苦的事情。
现代人的迷思不仅仅存在于工作中。如果仅仅谈工作，那么这对现代人生活的理解则太片面了。现代人的迷思在于：我们认为我们的生活是现在该有的样子。这一普遍的、广泛的、不加批判的’认为’背后隐藏着一个接一个巨大、无形的政治经济圈套。
现代社会所呈现的’生活’是我们从小便熟悉的’生活，这样的生活根植于我们记忆里，我们时常不假思索地跟随，天真地以为这是现代生活的真相。但当一个现象或一个物品被轻易地呈现在你眼前时，这意味着：1/这一现象/物品已经被测试多次，它能够满足你的基本需求并不会让你产生过多抱怨；2/这一现象/物品是被一件生产物，即它不是一种自然现象，而是一件被生产，被筛选，最终没被淘汰的生产物；3/它的目的在于让你相信它——不仅相信它的外表，更加相信它所呈现的价值（这三条规则同样适用于消费主义——当你想消费一件商品时，你的消费欲望远远超出于你的控制）。所以，现代生活本身得到几百年的洗礼与淘汰，在资本主义，社会结构，消费主义与物化异化等各个与资本为核心的现象中来回穿梭，最终呈现在我们眼前的则是它的最佳状态，而它的最佳状态则代表了现代社会罪恶的极致：物化、异化、规训、最终——正常化。