I'm OK, You're OK

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Well, it feels like Philosophy or Politics to me, and certainly there are implications for a number of religions. So I put it here:

I'm OK, You're OK - Whatever happened to it, anyway? One minute it is big, then all you get is uniformitarianism.

Kind of like the predicted coming Ice Age, which the Global Warming thing has eclipsed.

I sometimes forget I am an old fogey. Not sure when it was - there was a big move in the mindbending community centered around a book with thde I'l OK You're OK title.

The idea - as I understood it, which means little with so many things in popular culture making little real sense to me - was simple.

I look at you and see that [strange and repulsive though you may be] you are just walking your path and no threat to anyone but yourself. You look at me, and see a magnificent creature going about his own business and celebrating life, albeit weirdly.

SO - I quit trying to reshape you into an imitation me and celebrate your differences, and you don't get upset at me because I don't hold your values.

From which follows sanity, respect, nay iking, world peace and universal love. Or something.

Anyway, the idea though big at the time is now so dead it didn't say anything to you, and I wonder when and how it got dead.

I can't imagine that ever happening >.>

Its more "the nail that sticks out gets hammered down" for me.

Everything is about cliques, religious cliques in particular in my town.

Its the reason I swing into suicidal moods because people keep reminding me how they think no matter what I'll amount to nothing through facebook messages because I'm not in their clique.

"I'm OK, you're OK" probably fizzled because it doesn't meet the desire of the majority of people to feel that they are above another group. Like nationalism but on a smaller scale.

Are you sure you're OK?

"Are you sure you're OK?"

I'm Enneagram 5w4, so yes; who's the norm around here, anywhere? I do tend to havde that attitude, though of course I exaggerate. It helped - my mother broadcast so strongly that I and my ways and my interests and my ideas and my accomplishments were just not good enough, I had to have ingrained egotism to survive the psychic barrage. She never said it - but you knew it.

My wife points out that in the psych counseling world things move so fast that the I'n OK book was probably dead in the water before the last copy of the first printing was sold. It got big in the university counseling system. Nice idea while it lasted - but I am not sure anyone who went through the program really believed you were both okay. Either I knew I as a loser but said I was OK to make you feel good because you helped me, or I knew you were a loser but said you were OK to make nice and maybe you would get a nice self image and change.

But in general, yes, it is now and has been pretty much all my life GET THAT GREEN MONKEY!

Ah m'kay...

Just checkn' green man.

I don't know why you should consider the concept "dead." All that matters for me is that I am comfortable with who and what I am.

If I subscribe to the notion that other people are okay, then I need to accept the fact that they might not regard me as okay.

Actually, I think that I truly subscribe to the philosophy that everyone in the world is nuts, with the exception of you and me, although I do have my doubts about you.

I read it years ago and don't remember anything in it different from the same vapid new age twaddle as the stuffed pushed nowadays by Shirley MacClaine, Andrew Weil and Deepak Chopra.

I liked this one a lot more: I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional: The Recovery Movement and other Self-help Fashions (amazon link).

Funny how this kind of stuff always reminds me of this song....

[youtube]http://www.amazon.com/Im-Dysfunctional-Youre-Recovery-Self-Help/dp/0679745858[/youtube]

When I conquer the universe, will everyone be "OK" with that?

Yeah it depends a great deal on what policies you will enact.