The 4 tempers, the Severance procedure and the 9 Principles
At the end of Severance it was revealed that the files that MDR was refining were actually Gemma's consciousness.
In particular, they were removing her 4 Tempers: Woe, Malice, Frolic, and Dread. Every refined file corresponds to a new blank-slate innie for a new room.
Many speculate that Lumon is trying to perfect their severance procedure. They can already remove someone's memories from them, and they aim to also remove their personalities, make them sheepish and malleable and ready to obey whatever command they're given without question and without resisting.
I think this theory has merit. The four tempers correspond to sadness, fear, playfulness and cunning spitefulness, all things that make innies more resistant to their oppression.
Waking up in a strange room full with strangers with no memories is definetly scary. Makes people want to escape or fight. Being locked in an office with no option to leave without ever seeing the sun or the sky definetely makes people sad, making them yearn to leave. Playfulness makes people want to, well, play and have fun instead of working. A certain amount of malice aids in formulating an effective escape plan/fight your opressors back.
If you remove all of the above, you get the perfect worker. The perfect plialable, trusting person you can exploit how you want with minimal hassle. It's a very useful feature in the product Lumon is trying to sell:"Make this other person do all the boring, scary, painful, anxiety-inducing things in your life. Also don't worry, they feel no fear and no sadness so you don't need to feel guilty. Also they are very easy to train and will not cause problems".
It's basically the perfect product.
And I'm sure they'll sell it as an enlightenment thing. Kier tamed the 4 Tempers, after all. This is nothing but a technological shortcut to do the same, right? And if Kier did it, then it must be a good thing.
Kier is seen, as many cult leaders are in real life, as an extremely wise man, who was able to rise above and gain perfect self-control over his emotions. By taming the 4 tempers. Of course there is no actual proof he was a righteus man. And many fans suspect Imogene was a child bride (and I also think that). He was probably the furthest thing from a righteous man, and yet, as it happens in real life, he was able to fabricate this image of "Enlightened man", and gain a massive following because of it.
The Severance procedure helps you tame your 4 tempers. But this is not used for enlightenment. It is used for exploitation. It doesn't help people be free from their emotional problems. It makes them more easy to abuse.
Also, it's note worthy to me how the 4 Tempers are something to tame (something you want to free yourself from) while the 9 Principles are something to embrace (something you want to always be). But these things are oftentimes in conflict with each other.
As an example, let's take Malice (temper) vs. Wiles and Wit (Priciples). I'm italian, and in Italian the words "Malice" and "Wiles" are translated in the same way, "Malizia". They mean the same concept. In english, one has a negative connotation while the other has a positive connotation (depends on context but it's overall less negative). This mirrors something I've seen in real life religion. The same exact act can be described in two different ways. The same way of being can be both something wrong to punish and something good to celebrate. This way it's extremely easy to punish someone for the same actions someone else is celebrated for. The discriminant is, of course, the level of power that peron holds in the organization. If a severed worker is cunning, that means they are wicked and malicious. If a high-level Lumon executive does the same, they are witty and masterful. A similar thing happens with Frolic (Temper) vs. Verve and Cheer (Principles). That makes it very easy to pick and choose who has a right to be light-hearted and have fun and who doesn't.
