In an otherwise excellent article, The Economist commits an error of logic.

“A few have taken to calling themselves “Brights” for no good reason and to widespread mirth.”

In fact, I call myself a Bright for a very good reason… to create widespread mirth.

Speaking of Brights and widespread mirth…the most recent-but-one Brights Bulletin wanted us to vote for a tagline. We have already agreed on a logo and a mission statement and a definition – oh, and an antonym – now we need a tagline. As soon as we have our t-shirts printed and our policy statements finalized we are going to change the world!

So, we were going to go with :

Elevating the Naturalistic Worldview

until someone pointed was like…Hey! Brights don’t elevate! They illuminate! and we were like oh yeah! We should have a vote on that. We vote on everything at The Brights. When we are not elevating or illuminating we are voting. We modelled out society on an anarcho-syndicalist commune and we have bi-weekly meetings of our executive committee.

Anyway. The choices were

• Elevating the Naturalistic Worldview
• Illuminating and Elevating the Naturalistic Worldview

Being a community-minded Bright and not wanting people to make fun of us (despite our mission to spread mirth, we don’t like people making fun of us), I emailed the executive committee to point out how silly the choices were and to ask what was wrong with simply illuminating and what does elevating have to do with anything.

Apparently two dozen other people did the same thing but apparently we are the stupid ones because

“Frankly, the Brights movement, properly understood, is very much a “lift up” endeavor….But the “illuminating” aspect just won’t get the job done!”

The goal of this movement is to achieve a level societal playing field for people who, living amidst society’s dominant supernatural-infused outlooks, hold onto some variant of a naturalistic worldview.

Well! Consider me educated, frankly!

The best thing about this statement of policy is that it simultaneously manages to be both humourless and very, very funny – all contributing to the goal of spreading mirth. Result!

I am seriously considering joining the ceremonial deists though.