https://substack.com/@lauratiktinsharick, LTS points out that the rooms Gemma visits seem like scenarios for which people might choose to be severed. The dentist. A turbulent flight. A loveless marriage.
British philosopher Derek Parfit wrote a thought experiment something like this:
"You are in the hospital to have an extremely painful but completely safe Operation for which you can be given no anesthetic. In order to ease recovery, you know that the hospital will give you drugs that cause you to forget your Operation as soon as it is completed. You wake up, not remembering having gone to sleep, and ask the nurse if your Operation has been completed. She tells you that there were two patients for this Operation and she cannot remember which you are: either you already had your Operation and it was the longest such Operation ever performed, lasting ten hours, or else you are the other patient in which case your Operation is imminent, but will last only one hour." (Moller, Dan. "Parfit on Pains, Pleasures, and the Time of their Occurrence." Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020)
Which would you choose? Most of us would choose to have the pain behind us and the pleasure (if there is any) ahead.
This is what Lumon is up to. They are removing pain from the human experience.
The Death of Ivan Ilyich is about… well, so many things. https://georgesaunders1.substack.com can explain. Spoiler alert: Ivan is already dead when the book starts. And, really, he’s dead throughout, even when he’s walking around, breathing, making babies, collecting a salary.
Like Gemma, Ivan is walking death. Unlike Gemma, he has no idea until it’s too late.
The intake form at the fertility clinic had the Lumon logo on it.
And I only just noticed that the blood donation where Mark and Gemma met was a Lumon event.
https://substack.com/@lauratiktinsharick, LTS points out that the rooms Gemma visits seem like scenarios for which people might choose to be severed. The dentist. A turbulent flight. A loveless marriage.
British philosopher Derek Parfit wrote a thought experiment something like this:
"You are in the hospital to have an extremely painful but completely safe Operation for which you can be given no anesthetic. In order to ease recovery, you know that the hospital will give you drugs that cause you to forget your Operation as soon as it is completed. You wake up, not remembering having gone to sleep, and ask the nurse if your Operation has been completed. She tells you that there were two patients for this Operation and she cannot remember which you are: either you already had your Operation and it was the longest such Operation ever performed, lasting ten hours, or else you are the other patient in which case your Operation is imminent, but will last only one hour." (Moller, Dan. "Parfit on Pains, Pleasures, and the Time of their Occurrence." Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020)
Which would you choose? Most of us would choose to have the pain behind us and the pleasure (if there is any) ahead.
This is what Lumon is up to. They are removing pain from the human experience.
Milchick has no idea what’s happening below. Cobel does.
The Death of Ivan Ilyich is about… well, so many things. https://georgesaunders1.substack.com can explain. Spoiler alert: Ivan is already dead when the book starts. And, really, he’s dead throughout, even when he’s walking around, breathing, making babies, collecting a salary.
Like Gemma, Ivan is walking death. Unlike Gemma, he has no idea until it’s too late.
Suffering = pain + imagination.
Bliss = pleasure + wonder.
Gemma appears to have a different sliver of persona inside each room.