Over at The Island of Doubt, James Hrynyshyn (pronounced, no doubt, just like it's spelled) points to an article by Daniel Dennett in which he refuses to let a bad idea die:
In July, 2003, I wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times entitled "The Bright Stuff", where I drew attention to a budding movement among atheists intent on copying an idea from the homosexuals' excellent campaign: the hijacking of a perfectly good word with an established meaning, gay, and putting it to use with a new meaning, as a consciousness-raiser.
Articles like this make me question whether Dennett ever talks to any actual humans.
Dennett does acknowledge some problems, but his proposed solution doesn't seem like much of an improvement:
The term "bright" was chosen by two brights in Sacramento -- Paul Geisert and Mynga Futrell -- who thought we freethinkers (atheists, agnostics, et al -- needed a fresh name. In the aftermath of my op-ed piece, I've read quite a few articles and thousands of messages about the term "bright."
Most people who bother writing don't like the term -- including many brights (as I persist in calling them). It's rude, disrespectful, antagonizing, they say. In other words, it's just like "gay" (hey, you heteros, how do you like the implication that you're glum and gloomy?).
I am still not convinced that it was a mistake to go with bright. These things take time. Had Geisert and Futrell chosen some bland, mealymouthed term most would have forgotten it by now. The "in your face" quality of the term is, in my opinion, a piquant, but mild, antidote to the prevailing practice of hyper-deference paid to religions but to no other institution in the country. And I have reminded those who find the term objectionable that just as the antonym of gay isn't glum, but straight -- another happy word -- they are free to choose a peppy antonym for bright. I recommend super, since, unlike us brights, they believe in the supernatural.
Yes, it's all about branding. The mind boggles.
This is similar to the problem I've talked about before with people railing against religion: there's a huge disconnect between the way that religious people think, and the way that atheists think that religious people think. Dennett's pushing of "bright" is in the same vein, and really creates an impression that he's working from some sort of mathematical model of how human beings behave, without consulting any of us.
Look, "bright" doesn't fail because it lacks a palatable opposite. It fails because the first reaction of people hearing it is "Wow, that's dorky." This is true even of the people it might apply to. I don't know exactly what makes a term succeed or fail, but this one was a failure from the very first appearance, as you could tell from the howls of derision around the Internet.
Happily, "in your face quality" or not, it went away pretty quickly. Most people had forgotten about it (at least, I had, until this article crossed my path). And that was a good thing.
Pairing "bright" with "super" and coming back for a second try is just sad. Dennett comes off sort of like a junior high Trekkie who thinks the cool kids will accept him once he finishes dubbing The OC in Klingon. It's tone-deaf in a way that suggests he just doesn't understand people at all.
And let me just say that I'm kind of insulted by the analogy to "gay." In particular, the description of this little linguistic adventure as
copying an idea from the homosexuals' excellent campaign: the hijacking of a perfectly good word with an established meaning, gay, and putting it to use with a new meaning
is downright offensive. Does he really think that there was a meeting of the Secret Homosexual Cabal somewhere that carefully picked "gay" as their chosen name, as a deliberate matter of positive branding? I'm not gay, but I'm offended by that.
First of all, this is off in Rick Santorum sort of territory, with some nebulous group setting the Homosexual Agenda (Protocols of the Elders of Stonewall?). More importantly, though, the word "gay" already had a long history of referring to licentiousness before it was "hijacked" (in Dennett's term) in the 60's and 70's.
(Note, too, that even today you're as likely to hear "gay" used dismissively ("Dude, that's totally gay.") as you are to hear it used as a positive term. Words are slippery that way.)
But the biggest problem with equating "bright" with "gay" is that it trivializes the achievements of the gay rights movement. Homosexuality was illegal, even in Western countries (see "Turing, Alan") until quite recently, and even today, the legal status of homosexuals is short of full equality. Gays are legally forbidden to marry in most of the US, and there are parts of the country that still punish sex offenses more harshly when the people involved have the same sex.
The legal rights of atheists are in much better shape than those of gay people right now, and that's after nigh on forty years of active campaigning for equality. Attempting to draw a parallel between the current state of atheism and the situation of homosexuals at the time when they started to "hijack" the word "gay" is incredibly offensive. And the implication that re-branding themselves as "gay" was the crucial step in the fight for equal right goes past "offensive" and into "idiotic."
(I suppose there might be a valid lesson to be drawn from the analogy, but it's not that careful branding is the role to societal acceptance. The useful point is probably that attempts to re-work a group's image work best when they draw on terms that are already in use. If people who watch Pat Robertson were in the habit of dismissively referring to atheists as "brights," then you could usefully co-opt the term, and get it to stick (see also "Mormon"). I don't think that self-labelling is going to take off, though, particularly not when the chosen label gets such a poor reaction from even the people you would like to adopt it.)
This whole business annoys me in exactly the same way that the "fans are slans" strain of SF fandom does. The idea that all militant atheism needs in order to win wider acceptance is a catchy name is the result of thought processes that suggest near-total ignorance of how most people think and act and form societies. And that, in turn, points to the real reason why Dennett et al. aren't more widely accepted.
I disagree. Saying that a group did something does not necessarily mean that there was some secret cabal behind that action. How do you think new slang words arise, at teenager committee meetings?
OK, this gets my vote for best snark line of 2007...
I have to say that "queer" is a better analogy to use. It was originally used as an insult, and was adopted with pride by the LGB community. I think that "gay" has a similar history. "fag" also works, although it is still used as an insult.
Interestingly (at least to me) the African American community has the exact opposite experience. Every term that they try to adopt gains negative overtones. "colored" was originally (IIRC) coined as a non-offensive replacement for "negro", etc.
So, the way to mimic the gay community (who turn insults into compliments) and not the African American community (who invent new terms) is to adopt the term "god-hating-liberals" as a term of pride.
Note: The previous is all over-analysis, and somewhat tongue in cheek.
Oh so now I'm a gay bright. I prefer godless liberal to be honest with you.
Maybe we should ape the "gay" as "lame" usage. I've noticed that a lot of people using that sense of the term online go to pains to spell it "ghey" so as to, at least in their minds, not conflate homosexuality and lameness.
So, we have a ready-made term for theist-alienating or just plain dorky militancy by the likes of Hrynyshyn or Dawkins, and we can readily distinguish such things from people-with-naturalistic-worldviews to cut off the claim that this is due to some religious conspiracty. We just point out that things like the linked essay "are just so bryte."
A thing that vastly amuses me: the phrase "Be Bright" is presently appearing on TV sets all over the country . . .
. . . as a holiday advertisement for Wal-Mart.
Somehow I fancy that the two target audiences are not the same.
To add to the bad comparisons, the use of the word gay seems, in my experience, to have evolved over time. Trying to duplicate something like that isn't going to necessarily work since, by the very effort of duplicating a complex process like this, you do it with a simple process which probably isn't going to work.
The second problem I find is that the words used are for a much broader spectrum of people - I would probably be considered a bright, but I don't consider myself an atheist (due to issues with simplistic terminology). So some brights would NOT consider me a bright. Until people are sure exactly how wide a term encompasses, its hard to apply it.
I have to say that "queer" is a better analogy to use. It was originally used as an insult, and was adopted with pride by the LGB community. I think that "gay" has a similar history. "fag" also works, although it is still used as an insult.
I dredged up that Wikipedia article in an effort to determine what the history of "gay" was, and it's pretty ambiguous. It's not clear from the stuff I read how much it was a term of insult, though it clearly had some negative connotations.
I suspect that it became the term of choice through some combination of co-opting a derogatory term, and needing a convenient and ambiguous term for "homosexual" to allow people to identify each other, what with homosexuality being illegal and all.
I talked about "gay" in this post because that's the word Dennett used in his article. I agree that the history of "queer" is clearer, but I suspect he chose "gay" specifically because it's a more socially acceptable term than "queer." And also because of the ambiguity of the origin-- his chosen term "bright" is not currently being used as a slur, so he can't very well compare it to "queer."
To add to the bad comparisons, the use of the word gay seems, in my experience, to have evolved over time. Trying to duplicate something like that isn't going to necessarily work since, by the very effort of duplicating a complex process like this, you do it with a simple process which probably isn't going to work.
Yep.
While it is possible to coin new words, or force new meanings on old words, it's not always a straightforward process. Language is slippery, and people are ornery.
It seems like the kid who invents a nickname for himself, and then tries to get people to call him by it.
Well said; I agree with you completely, Chad.
One other point against adoption of the "bright" idea is that it is specifically the kids of those fundamentalist non-thinkers we oppose ourselves to who are also bullying the best and brightest of our school-age kids for "being too smart" and thus making school "harder" for them.
This Straight Dope column also sheds some light on the history of "gay."
Didn't we have an outbreak of the same sort of thing a little while back? Only I think the term was "reality-based community." It didn't exactly spread like wildfire.
"bright" reminds me of the use of "husky" as the name of a clothing size for fat kids.
"Didn't we have an outbreak of the same sort of thing a little while back? Only I think the term was "reality-based community." It didn't exactly spread like wildfire."
That was the opposite - the phrase was coined by the opposition (some wanker in the Bush administration, which is not reality-based).
I've seen far more people describe themselves as members of the "reality based community" than I've seen describe themselves as "bright".
Yeah, that sounds about right for Dennett and the whole sordid issue.
I mean, I'm an atheist with a nice, high IQ and a degree in Philosophy; I was on the Dean's List my senior year, etc. - which I mention to make it clear I'm totally qualified to be what Dennett is talking about...
And the very term "bright", used without irony, makes me want to beat him to death with a blunt object.