Harvesting Sulphur From Smokestacks

I like living where there is no margin for bullshit…

In July, 2022, I returned to university to get my masters is psychology. In anticipation of confronting an education model that emphasized specialization rather than learning for the sake of learning and in the direction of interest. I decided to immerse myself in a derivative of Family System Therapy developed in the early eighties entitled Internal Family Systems”

To be blunt, I wanted to find the middle way between learning and bullshit. Being reared in a fundamentalist conservative, Catholic environment and being the youngest of ten children required the necessity of hyper-vigilance and self-preservation. The issue with being in a constant state of hyper-vigilance is that one doesn’t know what is truly beneficial and what is truly threatening.

Family Systems Therapy is essentially family therapy that explores family dynamics. If I am paraphrasing correctly, it is based on aberrations that rise in the family due to trauma, epigenetics, generational dynamics (patterns that move through family generationally) etc. Separation from self and enmeshment leads to an anxiety state that the family functions under. In time, everyone functions to maintain that anxious equilibrium. (note the term “anxious equilibrium”) “Triangles” are the relationships within the largest family. Classic is mother, father and “problem” child. Therapy begins to deal with the child’s “issue” The undercurrent is that issue is between the parents…and the child’s “problem” is the kid’s adaptive strategy to keep the mother/father relationship intact.

The Internal Family Systems modality takes this idea one step further in that this dynamic is applied internally. What are family members externally are “sub personalities” or “parts” internally. This model implies that there is a central “self” that can never be damaged. The “parts” that develop do so as adaptive strategies to survive and move forward. How I would describe it is that these parts work until they don’t. They’ve become obsolete. That’s when a system’s change becomes necessary. In this model, the change is to “tease” these parts apart, give them space to breathe, and guide them back to the way “Universe” functions…where nature does not cast shame or blame and where healing is innate.

From “there’s not enough to go around for everyone” to “there’s enough to go around for everyone”

For me, this model is a natural extension of Buckminster Fuller. Since I began interfacing with him (especially after reading “you’re a tremendous bundle of experience” and “earning a living implies earning the right to live.”) I’ve thought deeply as to where our true worth lies. It may sound simple…my answer so far is that we are “worth” just by being alive. We, literally are, “worth” doing or, as Monsieur Alan Watts would say, we are “worthing” all the time. If we accept the base meaning of karma and not it modern “cause and effect” derivative”, our worth is our karma. This worth is 100% effective.

How I would simplify it…

My “acting out” in a hardcore Catholic environment was to steal money out of my mom’s purse and dad’s wallet. I felt the guilt for doing this after the fact for many years. Until I realized (probably around the time I began reading Bucky) that I “stole” in order to move from a “negative” place to a “less negative” space. As “aberrated” as it may seem, it was a movement for growth.

Stealing the money became “unshamed” and, instead, became a necessary adaptive strategy for survival that would someday become obsolete.

The weight of guilt on my shoulder immediately lifted.

Another approach….

Bucky’s statement about harvesting sulphur from smokestacks. Recycling from what seemingly can’t be recycled.

I don’t think that you can think deeply about worth and not eventually come across thinking deeply about authoritarianism and fascism. In a world of abundance, these cease as powerful long-term strategies. Their value lies in “triage” moments (accidents, emergency rooms. 9/11 moments, etc) or in consensual play. I am reminded of sailing. Actor Sterling Hayden (the actor who played General Jack T. Ripper in “Dr. Strangeglove”) wrote in his book “Wanderer” that “there is no democracy on a sailboat”

What I am about to write deserves more depth in telling. I’ll keep it short….

For me, it came down to being curious about where authoritarianism is hidden (any system that personifies “purity” as the goal. I call these “purity traps) and that due to its original necessity (keeping groups together to survive in a world where there isn’t enough to go around) and its generational maintenance (high-stakes, hell-threatening, trans-national shaming systems such as organized religion, neo -liberalism, etc.) that this authoritarianism has been internalized by all of us. (critical paralyzing inner voices, addictions, obsessions for “oneness”) This distrust of self is heightened by the easy ability of social media to create purity traps and establish corrals that have no fences. (my feeling is that algorithms are authoritarian and are an effacement of purity traps)

To bring it back around to the Internal Family Systems model. If authoritarianism is internalized, then this “enmeshment” needs to be teased apart so it can breathe and shown of its necessity, it’s obsoleteness, and its value now of being sulphur to be harvested.

To bring it back to the movie of Maurice, if I am to return to school to truly learn, I want to tease this inner authoritarian apart…. and rather than build a case against others long term (non-game, non-play) instead stay in a space where I/we can breathe and learn.

(Photograph by Shannon Said of the Texas Gulf Sulphur Co. Smoke Stacks)