Lumon is a Global Consciousness Cult

This weekend I set about re-watching the entirety of Severance Season 1. Doing so inspired me to write up predictions to Season 2, or beyond.

Spoilers abound so, if you haven’t watched all of Severance Season 1, please, off you go.

As the title describes, I think that Lumon is a fictional cult version of a Global Consciousness Project. What the heck is that? You should really go read about it for yourself, but here is a tagline from their website:

The Global Consciousness Project
Meaningful Correlations in Random Data
Coherent consciousness creates order in the world
Subtle interactions link us with each other and the Earth

The more objective description from Wikipedia is that:

The Global Consciousness Project…is a parapsychology experiment begun in 1998 as an attempt to detect possible interactions of “global consciousness” with physical systems.

Their detection equipment relies on random number generators that use quantum tunneling effects to ensure randomness. They assert these EGG sites can be influenced into producing ordered or structured data when millions of people feel the same way about something at the same time.

They assert that the odds of their random number generators producing seemingly non-random, subtly structured data by chance are one in a a trillion. To quote the GCP web site,

“Large scale group consciousness has effects in the physical world. Knowing this, we can intentionally work toward a brighter, more conscious future.”

I think that Lumon is a fictional global consciousness cult. Their founder Kier believed in the power of these large group consciousnesses to influence the world at a macro level. That’s why the group doing such mysterious work is called Macro Data Refinement.

I also think that at some point Kier’s original vision was mutated. There are several references in Season 1 to Kier’s original texts and ideas. I think the Lumon corporation from Season 1 arose from a modern offshoot that took Kier’s original ideas and twisted them into something that sounds wholesome on the outside, but is actually rather sinister on the inside. I think it’d be fun if in Season 2 we find out that a group of orthodox Kier believers are supporting Reghabi and her efforts to reintegrate severed employees. I also think it’d be fun if Harmony Cobel is an orthodox believer and is secretly harboring a desire that the severed can be reintegrated. It would be deliciously honest if BOTH the original and modern Kier ideals were equally horrible.

So what are the modern-day Lumon Corporation and its creepy, potentially “revolving” CEOs up to? I think they want to put chips into everyone they possibly can to employ them as part of their Global Consciousness Project. Perhaps MDR is a core component or just one piece in a larger puzzle. I’m not sure but I do think by turning millions of people into Kier’s children, they’ll magnify their power to influence the world with their massive coherent consciousness.

How does being severed fit in? I think that the fresh, moldable minds of a newly severed employee are required to produce a nimble, impressionable, enslaved, and child-like consciousness that can be trained to cohere with those of their fellow macro data refiners. The enhanced coherence of severed employees enables them to subtly influence macro events in their favor with greater effectiveness than non-severed employees.

The Lexington Letter strongly insinuates that whatever the refiners are doing influences events that unfold at a macro level (the outside world). The example from The Lexington Letter being the bombing of a competitor in New York, aka an MDR file named the Lexington File.

I think this fictional event was inspired by the assertion of the real Global Consciousness Project that the events of 9/11 resulted in a large coherence of conscious thought. So large that it could be measured on their random number generators.

So the Macro Data Refiners are not working to get meaning out of the numbers, but rather the numbers are encoded feelings for the severed to be conscious of. The MDR terminals help guide them by showing them when they’ve associated the wrong feeling with the encoded numbers. They’re all working to not just find, but also to create, order out of chaos. The files the MDRs work on are the desired outcomes Lumon desires. If the MDRs don’t refine the file in time, the moment passes and the file expires.

The notion of wall time seems very intentional given the inclusion of watches and clocks throughout the episodes. For example, Dylan’s Linkedin video shows that he knows what a clock is but seems to have trouble knowing what time it is. In S1E1, Mark goes into work with his outie’s watch showing that it is the 4th, but upon the end of this shift, his watch reads the 5th. Mark’s outie, or oMark, seems not to notice that he’s been at work an extra day since he’s mixed up about the trash schedule as well as the date for his in-law’s dinner-less dinner. Throughout the series they go to what must make extraordinary efforts to ensure continuity between shots that have clocks in them, and there are a lot of shots with clocks. Even if they are digitally added in, which would be a clever tick, their inclusion is surely an expense and intentional.

Perhaps the clocks are simply symbols of office life. For example, workers often literally watch the clock wishing it to speed up to quitting time. For the innies, there is no quitting time. The innie’s clocks just loop back around instantly to morning as they get on and off the elevator. The constant reminder of their office clocks never having a quitting time helps us viewers identify with the hellish nature of their existence.

However, I think the clocks are also important because the MDR work and Lumon’s global consciousness project is related to the General Resonance Theory of Consciousness (GRT). Perhaps on the severed floor they are isolated to a degree from the outside world that they are no longer harmonizing with anything other than their fellow MDRs where the common medium is the severed floor. The clocks are there to remind us not only of their hellish existence, but also that they are all in-sync with their severed peers. This synchronization is important to the MDR’s conscious coherence, as described by the above article on GRT,

The experience, objective (i.e., task performance), and subjective (self-other merging, feelings of affiliation, etc.) of individuals as they synchronize and become nested in the larger group cognitive system is very much altered from their regular waking consciousness.

While the severed MDRs are probably a combination of being lab rats and slaves, their purpose is not to be just subjects of observation. The MDRs are enacting change in the world via the pure, severed, interconnected group flow they engage in.

As a minor aside, and perhaps purely by coincidence, the Jame Egan character does looks a hell of a lot like Roger Nelson, the developer of the Global Consciousness Project.

Finally, how does MDR actually work? While hopefully Severance Season 2 provides more answers, I think the MDR terminals are some fictional form of an EGG that works in reverse. We all know that the the egg bar is coveted as fuck, and Ben Stiller has said eggs are an important plot point somehow. Perhaps the MDR terminals are some type of Electro Gaia Grams (EGGs) that work in reverse. Rather than coherent global consciousness events influencing EGGs, it is Lumon who influences the world’s events via their severed MDR’s focused and coherent conscious feelings directed in very specific ways.

Maybe. Or maybe the goats lay the eggs and they are delicious roll end credits. Maybe there are bigger plans in motion, or maybe Mark unknowingly tells us all what Lumon is up to when he answers Helly R’s question about whether she’s livestock or not with this gem:

You think we grew a full human, gave you consciousness, did your nails?