Brights, Supers, and Heres

Labels can be a real problem. On the one hand, they can be very useful little shorthand devices. Rather than having to spend a lot of time on subtle distinctions and variations, you can more quickly decide what you need to know to navigate your way in the world. They can also be nifty little tokens of group membership. Most of us want to belong somewhere, and with a short, "I am an X", we can often successfully group ourselves.

This can work out fine as long as those subtle variations and distinctions don't really matter, or as long as the label doesn't have negative consequences. In some places "apostate" can be a death sentence, despite whatever reasons and distinctions there might be. In other circles, being "religious" can make people take you less seriously.

Consider "atheist". By taking on such a label, people may assume you are arrogant, immoral, untrustworthy, and a royal pain. You might immediately exclude yourself from public office, or even some jobs. Some people might not want to associate with you, despite whatever other things you might have in common, like being a bluegrass fan or a bridge player. Some people might actually fear you as if you are there to steal their precious faith from them. All this, when gods are not even a concern of yours. Yet you have felt the need to label yourself in opposition to all the theists bristling about.

Enter the Brights. A bright is a person who has a naturalistic worldview, free of supernatural or mystical elements. At first they did not have an antonym to "brights", but now "super" is in use. They define a super as a person who does include supernatural or mystical elements in their worldview.

The Brights trying to define their own label is very understandable. All the existing labels that might do have so much baggage. Many of them lead to ideological disputes that seem just besides the point. On the other hand, the Brights see that they are at a social and political disadvantage, much like gays have been. In many ways the Brights movement is not so much about ideology as rights and giving people the courage to come out of the closet about their unpopular worldview, which may not be that unpopular after all.

But, as always, there is a problem (other than the unfortunate association of "brights" with "being bright" and the tendency of people to see this as a claim to superior intelligence). The problem is inherent in the whole enterprise of label making. The Brights had to choose some words to define their label, in particular, "naturalistic", "supernatural", and "mystical". Then they go on to say that everyone is either a bright or a super. (See Synopsis.)

Too bad they had to come up with an antonym and then group everyone else under that antonym. They did not like to be labeled by the issue of "god", as if that were the only issue, and now they are labeling everyone according to their stand on "naturalistic", "supernatural", and "mystical". And these terms are most problematical if you really try to pin down what they mean in concrete terms.

There is much that can be said about this, but let's just consider the distinction between methodological naturalism and metaphysical naturalism. Metaphysical naturalism states that only the "physical world" exists. Methodological naturalism suspends judgment on the metaphysical issues and just proposes to study any phenomena using the same general approach of systematically testing texts against our experiences. If there are any agents without physical bodies, then they will be studied using these same methods. So there could be entities that the Brights are calling supernatural or mystical, but if so, then the only way we human beings can study them is from where we are in our concrete, human situation.

Getting into the spirit of coining new labels, let's define a here as a person who starts from where they are, in their concrete, human situation of language, experience, and desire. We can say, "I am a Here" and talk about the Heres. Why not?

So the world cannot be conveniently divided into Brights and Supers. There are also Heres. For Heres, the terms "naturalistic", "supernatural", and "mystical" are very hard to pin down and may not be that relevant as ways to distinguish people into groups. The Heres can appreciate the social situation of the Brights and wish them well in their coming out exercise. They may have much in common with Brights in the methods they think are most useful in investigating our experiences. On the other hand, they can also respect the "mystical" paths of some religious people, although they might be very uncomfortable with religious fanaticism and exclusivism since they seem to be based on very weak evidence, if any at all.

There seems to be a tendency to exclude the middle in the Bright camp. Everyone who is not a Bright is in the same bucket, the Supers. This goes along with the denigration of religious moderates as being "just as bad" as the religious extremists or in some way facilitators of religious extremists because they do not go all the way over to a "naturalistic worldview, without supernatural or mystical elements". If religious moderates do give cover for religious fanatics and extremists, they should stop doing that, but it is not useful to divide the world into just two big groups, or even three. There are many more than that.