The Brights are a movement of people "whose worldview is naturalistic (free of supernatural and mystical elements)" and are trying to change the nature of public discourse and perception of such worldviews, by coopting the word "bright" as a noun much as "gay" was coopted to present a more positive, friendly term for homosexual. E.g. not "Are you bright", but "Are you a bright?" They claim Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and James Randi as Brights, which is certainly true; it may even be true that they self-identify with the Brights (Dawkins and Randi evidentally do). Nevertheless, I'm a bit sceptical of the linguistic theory that seems to underpin this cooption; hasn't anyone noticed that while Gay Pride doesn't cause most people to bat an eye, "that is so gay" is now not a compliment, where once it was? And despite the careful drawing of the noun/adjective distinction, trying to seize bright this way seems a quite a bit more aggressive and likely to raise hackles even among the sympathetic.
On the other hand, my world-view is naturalistic, free of the supernatural and mystical, and I wouldn't mind having a short-hand description that didn't characterize it totally in terms of what it's not (atheist, agnostic, unbeliever), and nowadays Epicurean requires just as much explication as would saying "I'm a Bright"--and if the meme takes off A Bright might end up requiring a whole lot less. It still makes me flash on those old Dr Pepper commercials, though....
Posted by joshua at July 1, 2003 08:11 PM