Once upon a time there was a word. It was an innocuous word, a happy word, a carefree word. Like most words, over the centuries it came to hold different meanings. At one point, it was slang for a hooker. Later, for a transvestite.
Sometime during the last half century, the word took on a new meaning, one which has come to dominate all other meanings. The word is "gay."
Where once homosexuals were stuck with desultory expressions such as "queer," "fag," "fairy," and so on, now there is the whimsically inoffensive "gay."
Certainly, the word "gay" occasionally has alternate meanings. About two decades ago, the word sometimes meant "stupid" or "boring" or "idiotic." And today, there is a resurgence of that usage. But it will almost certainly pass.
And there is another word. It, too, is an unpresuming word. Initially, it meant "splendid" or "gleaming." Eventually, it came to mean "quick-witted." The word is "bright." And today, there is a movement (just now beginning) to add yet another definition to this word, as a noun, not an adjective.
The new definition is, "a person whose worldview is naturalistic (free of supernatural and mystical elements)."
The people behind this movement are my friends Paul Geisert and Mynga Futrell. The Bright Idea was first presented three months ago at the Coalition for the Community of Reason meeting in Kansas City. More recently, it was presented at the Atheist Alliance conference in Florida. Attending this meeting were such luminaries as Richard Dawkins, James Randi, and Michael Shermer. The idea has been quite popular. All three of the above freethought fixtures, as well as hundreds more, now consider themselves to be Brights.
Why this movement? Because we, too, need a unifying word. When it comes right down to it, it's not important whether we are atheists, agnostics, humanists (secular or otherwise), freethinkers, igtheists, skeptics, rationalists, or whatever. If we dismiss superstition in favor of reason, we can say, "I'm a Bright!"
Having same-sex attraction is, after all, the only common denominator between gays. Beyond that, they're as different as any other group of people. Some are conservative, some liberal, some apolitical. Some are religious, some are not. Some are promiscuous, some are anything but. All of them, however, are attracted to their own gender.
And isn't that how we are? Some of us deny the possibility of a god, some don't. Some hold to humanistic views, others don't. Some are hard-edged science types, others are more philosophical. But any way you slice it, we all see the world without a supernatural slant.
A single term to unify us all may help us tremendously in our struggle to gain actual recognition by the masses. And the fact that the word is not negative makes it all the better.
So, why the word "Bright"? It stems from that period known as The Enlightenment, a political movement that posited that human reason could be used against ignorance and superstition to build a better world.
Sadly, today (especially in the U.S.) the ideas of The Enlightenment are largely ignored, if not condemned outright by our increasingly superstitious society. But those of us who consider ourselves freethinkers… who consider ourselves to be Brights… cannot allow this to continue. We know that these are sane and sensible ideas.
But isn't this rather arrogant to adopt such a word for ourselves? Not at all. When homosexuals adopted "gay" for themselves, it didn't mean that only homosexuals could be happy, did it? Of course not. Nor does our adoption of "Bright" imply that only our select group is intelligent. This isn't about separating our group from others; it's about unifying our currently segregated groups into one.
So we should strive to call ourselves Brights whenever possible. This will, of course, practically guarantee that we'll have to explain ourselves. "We view the world in a naturalistic fashion," we will say. And we'll explain further if we need to.
We will not cease being atheists, agnostics, humanists or whatever… We will merely take on one more label, a more inclusive label, a positive label. Our hope is that society at large will come to know us more readily, come to understand us more openly, because they are not so put off by what they view as negative names.
When the world was ruled by religion, we called it The Dark Ages. It's time now to bring about The Bright Ages. And such a renaissance can, in fact, begin with nothing more than a word.
For more information about Bright-ness, please visit The-Brights.Net.
