Your Humble Blogger is no Bright himself, but I do like the idea of Brights.\n\n
I read an op-ed column<\/a> by Daniel Dennett<\/a> in this morning's New York Times about The Brights<\/a>, who are trying to get the use of the term Bright into the general vocabulary.\n\n What’s a Bright, you ask? Well, now they’ve got you, haven’t they? That’s the first step to accepting the word exists.\n\n A Bright is a person whose worldview is naturalistic. That is, a person who doesn’t believe in the supernatural of any kind, neither ghosts nor gods nor ... some third thing that begins with a hard g and is supernatural. Gremlins? Gurus? Gregory the Great? Glossolalia? Graven Images? Yes, I’ll go with that. Neither ghosts nor gods nor graven images.\n\n Actually, it’s a disservice to define a Bright by what he (or she) doesn’t believe, rather than any positive thing. A Bright believes that the world is, essentially, measurable, in theory if not in practice.\n\n My Gentle Readers know by now that I am no Bright. Why, then, do I draw your attention to them? Because I like the idea of having a positively-oriented term for Brights, and I like the idea of Brights being a part of our culture (as in fact they are), and I like the idea of using language as a tool of cultural goals. I find the whole thing fascinating, and I hope it succeeds. I charge you all, therefore, to use the term yourself this week. If you are a Bright, say so. If you have a friend or relation who is a Bright, tell that Bright what a Bright is. Work the term in to conversation, as in “I’m no Bright, but I don’t believe in guardian angels,” or “They kill Brights in the Sudan,” or “You can’t be a Bright and a Red Sox fan.” It’s easy! And be sure to let me know how it works.\n\n Redintegro Iraq, Your Humble Blogger is no Bright himself, but I do like the idea of Brights. I read an op-ed column by Daniel Dennett in this morning’s New York Times about The Brights, who are trying to get the use of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[203],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nytimes"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1283"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16803,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1283\/revisions\/16803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"