Bright is as Bright Does

Well… Maybe this is the movement for me — my mom always said I was bright…

Aside from the comicbookguyness of this, about which you’re quite right, it bugs me that so-called ‘brights’ equate skepticism and atheism with a naturalistic worldview.

I’m an atheist more the way Nietzsche was an atheist than the way Stephen Jay Gould was an atheist. That means I’m not a ‘bright’.

It bugs me when people suggest that to eschew religion or belief in god is to eschew any idea of metaphysics or of spirit, or even of some specialness about human consciousness.

(I fall into the final category. I’ve met atheists who had a metaphysics, but I’m not among them. For me, though, the root of my atheism is not naturalism, but is precisely in my sense that there is something quite special about human self-definition, and human moral freedom. I find God incompatible with that specialness, so I find him contrary to my intuition.)

Whatever happened to the perfectly good term “secular humanist”?

Oh well, at least “bright” isn’t as bad as Paul Kurtz’s unwieldy “eupraxophist”.

wow. just what atheism needs, a cheery, pop rebranding, complete with celeb ‘coming out’s and no doubt brightly colored t-shirts emblazoned with ‘Brights’.

can atheism successfully employ the strategies of cults? why not heathen or godless, reclaiming slurs seems to me much more enticing than mr.dennett’s option.

Wow! That editorial is awful. I couldn’t even read the entire article.

But, what I did read reminded me of a passage from E.M. Forster’s essay, “What I Believe.” The first sentence of Forster’s essay is, “I do not believe in Belief.”

I believe in aristocracy though – If that is the right word, and a democrat may use it. Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet. They represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and choas. Thousands of them perish in obscurity, a few are great names. They are sensitive to others as well as for themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness, but the power to endure, and they can take a joke.

I would like to thank William Strunk for giving me the heads up. It is most likely that i would never have found this quote if it was not included as an example in “The Elements of Style.”

I’d like to suggest a couple of alternative terms that do a better job of honouring the movement’s founder, the Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford. How about ‘dicks’? Or ‘dorks’?

Give a thought to Comte’s Positivist religion which took on the trappings of Catholicism (sacraments, rituals, priests and prayers) and forgot all the good bits; stories, snacks, and all the best songs.

From the comments here, I begin to wonder whether there is a basic incompatibility between science and contemporary “critical” theory: Science will tell you that there is nothing special about humans; we are not in any way the center of the universe. Contemporary theory’s emphasis on knowledge as being exclusively a product of specific historical circumstances often gets used in the sense that we _are_ the center of the universe.

OK, so I’m a Bright (even though it’s an terrible word).

“How best to describe that community?”

Isn’t it obvious? They’re the Bright Brigade!

Into the jaws of Death,
But not into the mouth of Hell,
Because it doesn’t exist,
Just like elves and the Easter Bunny,
Rode the six hundred.

I have just read Daniel Dennetts article in the New York Times, July 12, and beg to differ with his definition. I have yet to meet these numerous academics who are “brights”. Here, in South Africa, our academics are well versed in their own fields but are certainly not “inquisitive” of any thing else WHATEVER in the world. And, we are passionately, and I mean passionately, religious! Still, it is consoling that there are other people on the planet, and especially in the USA, with a sense of wonder and curiosity about it all.
Guenevere Burke, Department of Chemistry, University of Cape Town.

Bright? too cute by half.

I guess I’ll be the one to mention Paul Fussell’s “Class X”, the ones who can whistle a Beethoven string quartet, among other things. I prefer to whistle art songs by Debussy myself. I hope that doesn’t disqualify me.

Anyway, there really can’t be too many of us “Class X”. For example, in New York City the only people who hear contemporary “classical” music are performers, composers or friends of the performers. This makes for some pretty small audiences.

Brights:

“Scientology for the 21st century”.

Alternatively:

“Objectivists for the new millennium”.

To call oneself a “bright” in the manner that Dennett has is the most self-serving and disingenuous title I can imagine. It’s marketing/positioning, pure and simple. To label yourself “bright” because you don’t believe in God, is to hint that those who do are “dim”. If Mr. Dennett wishes to be forthright about his disbelief, that is his right, but he should be forthright about it, call himself an atheist and be done with it.

Richard Dawkins writes about “Brights” here:

http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,981412,00.html

Of course, if you don’t like the word “meme,” you may not like Dawkins, since he invented the term.

In other news, we have yet another person who obviously has no personal knowledge about Mensa, but still feels comfortable knocking it.

Three dimensional scrabble? One-liners like that are easy to make, but (of course?) have nothing to do with reality.

By the way, even if that’s all Mensans did all day, why would that bother anyone?

I’ve been following this bright-business for a while, now, and there’s one thing I don’t understand:

What in the hell makes these people think that making a *noun* of it is an improvement?

I mean, let’s think about this: In what history and universe is it better to be:

“a gay” rather than “gay”

“a queer” rather than “queer”

“a brain” rather than “brainy”

“a green” rather than “green”

“a mic” rather than “irish”

“a punk” rather than “punk”

In the Judeo-Christian tradition light is associated with God, his Angels, and even Man, when Sanctified by Grace. By contrast Satan, and his evil works and pomps are associated with Darkness; Lucifer, (“Light-bearer”)rebelled against God and was cast into darkness.
I think a better term for these God-rejectors would be “DARKS”, since “BRIGHTS” might create an unwarranted association with God, Whom they reject..

The metaphorical ramifications of this are tempting. Soon the 100-watt brights will be slagging on the 40-watt brights. The soft-light fluorescent brights will denigrate the uncool, police-interrogation-glare brights. The soft-candlelight brights will get all the girls. Lucretius will be compared to an oil lamp — a crude early attemot at brightness. I could go on. (You’re welcome).

I’m not very keen on ‘bright’ either. I don’t like euphemisms, and I especially don’t like cute ones. But secular humanist is not a synonym for atheist. I’m an atheist, and a secularist, but not a humanist. I don’t worship humans, for a start. They’re a tad flawed for that.

There are some groups in which atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, “brights,” etc. exist in higher concentrations than in the population at large and may even consitute a majority. I think the higher percentage of persons with these views correllates directly with higher levels of education (and with the higher intelligence required to complete advanced degrees in academic or scientific fields.) You may find a majority among scientists (not to be confused with high school science teachers) because a devoted scientist spends so much of his time thinking in terms of mechanisms and processes and interactions that he tends to view everything with the same scrutiny–down to his own emotions and desires.

Among their collegues, such areligious people enjoy a level of tolerance that doesn’t exist in the world at large. The rest of us, unless we have an agenda, prefer to remain reticent. Although “freedom of religion” is touted as one of the great achievements of the Founding Fathers of the U.S., and religious folks make a big fuss about saying everyone is entitled to their individual beliefs, rarely is that same lip service paid to people who have no faith. In a society that is hostile to our views, it behooves us to avoid revealing ourselves in mixed company.

I dislike saying “I don’t go to church” when I mean “I am an athiest and am thouroughly anti-religious.” Nevertheless, I don’t need a role model, and I don’t need a catchy name for my views. Besides, the public advocacy and neologism smacks of New Age to me. My apologies to subscribers of the Utne Reader, but I think that kind of soft-headedness is bad thing, despite good intentions. Acheiving and maintaining a rationalist way of thinking is difficult. I don’t think Dennett and Dawkins are really helping our freethinking brethren. I find it actually helps to be assailed by religious sentiment on a regular basis; it hones my ability to recognize tainted patterns of thought and speach in myself.

Whatever. Maybe some mediocre biology major at Antioch College will work up the nerve to admit he’s not a believer. I don’t take much pride in that victory. Besides which, he’s going to look like an ass if he calls himself a “bright.” And the worst thing about identifying himself as a “bright” is that he will almost certainly be too stupid to know that he is reciting a creed when he responds to the question, “What’s a bright?”

Science and all religions are factual structures based on belief systems. Science does a fair job of describing (but not explaining) material processes, but has no more authority than Christianity when it comes to explaining the universe. Either may be right, but are much more likely to be so inadequate as to be meaningless.

The idea that the ‘supernatural’ doesn’t exist because you can’t sense it is as intelligent as a blind person disputing the existence of the moon.

Mr Dawkins prosecutes his beliefs with what can only be described as religious zeal. The man has a religious nature, but for psychological and circumstantial reasons chose atheism as his religion, with Darwin his Jesus.

The ‘bright’ logo is no more daft than the certainty and supposed authority of logic with which atheists promote their beliefs.

45 bright comments, what a small percentage.

Rant on about the Brights, if you will. What flickers in this brain is concern about the Dims. Not only, clearly, are there more and more…but they’re hogging all the Juice!

Pity these sad people. They wish to shed anything negative with the word atheist. They wish nothing more than for people to notice them in a positive way. They have major mental problems.

The whole site is unkind to those of us who have visual problems.

The software and hardware people have made tools to enlarge the font but with some site this causes overlapping frames that make the enlarged fonts unreadable.

At crooktimer.org there is a row of links down the right hand side of the screen that overlaps the text when the font is enlarged.

“least plausible religion ever”, “fontana labs”? Not hardly. The Morons…er, Mormons…er, excuse me, the “Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints” isn’t the wierdest, least plausible, or even the stupidest religon on this poor benighted old planet. Not by a long shot.

But Orrin Hatch is a doofus, granted. It just doesn’t matter that he’s a Saint. He’d be a doofus anywhere, anytime. It’s his nature, not his religon.

That said, how about organizing a contest, “Brights” vs. “Clams”?

Something along the lines of the invasion of Guadalcanal…

Pick a nice word with somewhat perjoritive antonyms (Dimbulbs? Darkies?), stick it on you and your friends. Now you can point at people who disagree with you and yell NEENER NEENER. Feels good.

In what is laughingly referred to as the Real World, this doesn’t work. People get offended when you dis their beliefs. Want a name? Pick something nice and neutral like “secular humanist”. (Note for a poster far above — “humanist” doesn’t mean “worshiping humans”. It means “people matter”.)

When dealing with theocrats, I’ve found it much more productive to play them off against each other. Frontal attack doesn’t work; there are more of them than there are of you.

Ahhh scientism and vacuous rhetoric.

Watching the Internet ripples on the ‘Brights’ after an Op Ed article by Dennett in the time leaves me wincing with embarassement. These poor people seem unaware of the meaning of stupidity. One mutters, don’t go this route. To espouse atheism is one thing, but to suggest that atheism is a sign of some special ‘brightness’ is the kind of balderdash Dawkins has been peddling for a bit too long, and it makes no historical sense. The sad thing is the way Darwinism has decreased social intelligence. That’s a scandal, and worse, nothing seems possible to stop it.

Are all Tufts professors espousing silly names for commonplace beliefs which, given their abundance, hardly need defense and special political pandering? Does a Gilbert Ryle-meets-Scientism conspiracy grip all of Tufts faculty? I really want to know, because I was thinking of going. Comments?

Gah! This reminds me of nothing so much as Andrew Sullivan’s continuing endeavor to convince people to use the term “eagle” to describe people who think like Andrew Sullivan.

I’m an unwashed heathen, meself.

Does this movement have participants or recruits in Australia? Australia is full of philosphers who are not shy of being called atheistic materialists (and nonphilosophers too) I am sure that support for ‘bright rights’ would be forthcoming here,
But those who would avow brightness don’t really get much eyebrow raising or frowning from religionists or establishmentarians. So not much urgency is likely to be felt about the matter.

For me the key question is not whether there’s a God (if there is one he’s abandoned us) it’s whether Nature contains the explanation for its own existence or not. I don’t think it does so I can’t rule out the metaphysics.

With their cloyingly cutesy concept of ‘brights’, Dennett/Dawkins et al appear to be making explicit what has long seemed implicit in their expoundings: they would like to make of their shared worldview an ideology or creed which can be set up in opposition to other ideologies or creeds.

In doing so they reveal themselves to be closer to their supposed opponents than they would care to acknowledge. As pointed out elsewhere in this discussion, the vehemence of Dennett’s/Dawkin’s opposition to religion, and promotion of their own ‘hard Darwinism’, itself appears to have religious overtones.

And surely, what is most regressive about religion, from an intellectual and a human standpoint, is not its commitment to the ‘supernatural’ (whatever that might be), but its dogmatism. The ‘bright’ movement’s expectation that followers will declare their adherence to a particular belief structure pushes it down this pathway, and contravenes the Enlightenment principle of intellectual openness; the acceptance of the revisability of even core belief principles.

Whereas atheism and its arguably subtler cousin agnosticism are effectively negatively defined positions, Dennett, Dawkins and Co. want people to sign up to something more aggressive. As mentioned by others here, this ‘naturalistic world view’ ends up being something so inclusive and mellifluous that it is basically meaningless, or involves a commitment to D&D’s own narrowly defined position: that everything is at least in principle reducible to interactions governed by Newtonian mechanics, as they impact on observable phenomena (a kind of quasi-positivism).

Dennett usually defends this position as being simply a pragmatic epistemology; when prodded on the issue it turns into something more like a dogmatic metaphysics.

Philosophical considerations aside, one wonders what the haranguing of all things religious is really about. From a British (read New Zealand or Australian) perspective, it’s almost incomprehensible why D&D would want to spend so much time attacking what seems to be a straw man. The differences in the American situation are noted, and it is indeed worrying that academic faculty in Missouri can’t admit to being atheists.

However, I find it hard to believe that fundamentalism is widespread among New England academes: it certainly isn’t in New Zealand universities, yet I’ve been to lectures by both Dennett and Dawkins in which they spent most of the time rubbishing Creationist theories. People were puzzled – the expression ‘preaching to the converted’ sprang to mind. I certainly see no record of the Leaders of the Brights down in the Deep South impassionedly trying to convince hellfire-raising preachers of the error of their ways…

Maybe it would be unkind to suggest that it adds up to an easily identifiable and quotable ‘brand’ issue that has a vague tinge of controversy and helps to sell more books…

I like the concept of Bright, but I think it’s a bad name. As my poll shows (see url), most people find it offensive and I think that’s because it seems to imply that supernaturalists are somehow less “bright”. Although I like Humanist or Secular Humanist, I do agree with those who say it is not all inclusive because you can have a naturalistic outlook and still not accept the specific moral values that Humanists embrace. A good blanket term, and one that my poll shows is the most popular, is “Freethinker”. Yeah, in rare cases a supernaturalist might call themselves a freethinker, and even be a freethinker, but such people can be good political allies, esp. in regard to church-state separation issues.

Chronicle of Higher Education
Thursday, July 24, 2003

BOOKMARK

A Collection of Ancient Folk Tales From Turkey Meets Modernity on the Internet
By BROCK READ

For more than four decades, researchers interested in folklore and oral history have trekked to Lubbock, Tex., to use one of the world’s most comprehensive collections of indigenous tales: the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University. Now, through a digitization project, http://aton.ttu.edu
librarians at the university are making their unique archive accessible to a broader audience on the Web.

Texas Tech came upon its sizable collection “by sheer luck,” according to H.B. Paksoy, an adjunct professor of history at the institution who heads the online project. In 1961, Warren Stanley Walker, a professor of English at Iowa’s Parson College, was teaching English in Turkey on a Fulbright grant. There he met Ahmet Edip Uysal, a professor of liberal arts at Ankara University.

The pair shared an interest in Turkey’s rich but largely unacknowledged history of folk narratives, and spent parts of several years journeying to small villages to document indigenous tales and traditions. When Walker returned to the States and took a position at Texas Tech, Uysal continued to send information collected from the field. The transcripts and recordings that Walker accumulated became the basis of the university’s collection. (Uysal died in 1997, Walker in 2002. Walker is survived by his wife, Barbara, who worked with the oral-narrative archive until this year.)

Online, the Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative makes available all of Walker and Uysal’s transcripts of Turkish epics, folk legends, and local stories. The Web site’s highlights include versions of the Dede Korkut, an oral history of Central Asia that survived for almost a thousand years before it was committed to paper in the 19th century. Samples of Uysal and Walker’s fieldwork include stories like “The Guessing Children” and “The Farmer and the Bear,” gathered from Turkey’s Konya province.

Such narratives shed light not just on Turkish life, but on the central role of folk tales in cultures throughout the world, according to Mr. Paksoy. “These would be of great interest to anyone investigating cross-cultural stories,” he says. “A great volume of what we have online applies to students of anything from Icelandic sagas to African narratives, because it provides a context and a sense of what themes develop across cultures and geographies.”

In addition to the transcripts, the site includes a growing number of multimedia elements. At present, Mr. Paksoy and his colleagues have digitized a small collection of images of modern-day Turkey, audio of indigenous-music performances, and many of Uysal and Walker’s recordings of epic tales as narrated by Turkish citizens. Mr. Paksoy says he is working on placing recordings of key narratives alongside the transcripts so that researchers can listen to a reading in a Turkish dialect while examining its translation.

Faculty members at a number of colleges offering courses in Turkish culture and linguistics — including Princeton and Indiana Universities and the University of Pennsylvania — have directed students to the site, Mr. Paksoy says. Erika H. Gilson, a professor of Near Eastern studies at Princeton University, is one such professor. Ms. Gilson and other professors say that the site is a useful tool in part because it provides students of Turkish with valuable exposure to the language as it is spoken.

The Web site presents its information in a smorgasbord of languages. Most of the material is available in both Turkish and English, but many of the narratives are recorded in some of the many dialects — including Kazakh, Turkmen, and Uzbek — that appear in pockets throughout the nation. The site’s use of multiple languages has increased its appeal, Mr. Paksoy says, noting that the project has attracted a strong contingent of international users.

And Mr. Paksoy says that the archive’s home on the Web has made the narratives available to an audience that would never have traveled to Texas to use the originals. In the first three weeks of 2003, when the project made its debut online, some 10,000 documents were viewed or downloaded — more, according to Mr. Paksoy, than were read in the library’s previous 41 years. The original collection can still be seen only by appointment.

“This way we can reach the furthest corners of the earth without potential users’ having to travel,” he says.

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Go Back to Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative
Uysal Walker Türk Öykürleri Sandığı’na Geri Dönüş

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Copyright © 2002-2003. Southwest Collection / Special Collections Library
Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas
Comments

For what it’s worth (and coming from an anonymous post, let’s say not much) there is a bit of blindness evidences by most of the harsh critics of the Bright movement. I do a bit of research regarding extant worldviews, have for a while. When I stumble on something new (new to me, or ‘brand-new’ though don’t care fro the expression), it doesn’t make me afraid or spark a desire to condemn. Relax. If you insist on being blind, please don’t be afraid of that which you stumble over in the dark. This comment in no way addresses the visually impaired. Thanks.