Action Arena #2:
Budding Brights
Introduction
“Growing up to be a bright” is far more the exception than the rule. Most youngsters, surrounded by society suffused with beliefs in supernatural realms, absorb the milieu, the language, and the constraints on thinking. Except for science instruction (and the state of that in primary school is often quite dreadful), there is all too little outside the home to uphold and nurture a naturalistic understanding. The reality is that parents need ways to more constructively cope with dominant social conventions and institutions.
Indoctrinate? Or Educate?
Erecting Walls; Opening Horizons
Parents who are brights are typically averse to indoctrination of any kind. As a general rule, it is not only the channeling of children into beliefs in supernatural that they oppose. They also do not wish to propagandize their own naturalistic worldview. What they do favor is opening doors to their children to learn. Furthermore, they wish to protect their youngsters as best they can from societal imposition of false understandings.
Through Web hub activism, Brights can likely begin to convey some significant ways and means for nourishing and sustaining a perspective consistent with that of brights all over, along with a “bright pride” that builds nerve and sustains civic involvement.
For the many youngsters who absorb dominant society’s supernatural thinking while growing up, “unraveling and undoing” conceptual and emotional understandings learned in early life is not easy. They may eventually reverse course and become brights, but it is a long and difficult trip.
The fewer who face these disquieting personal journeys, the better.
