Interested in Blogging?
This page is for individuals to consider prior to putting themselves forward as candidates to blog in a general domain of interest. Once a few Brights are enrolled to provide ongoing commentary, we will perhaps consider shorter duration or less frequent postings by guest bloggers, whose commentary can focus on topics of the day or on issues of life in general.
Message from the Executive Director (12/2012)
You may be among the many folks registered in the constituency of Brights well-suited to blogging. Please consider…
- Do you have an urge to speak on topics of the day?
- Do you take steps to ground your opinions in available evidence?
- Are you comfortable in standing behind what you say with your own identity?
- Do you think you have worthwhile things to say regarding issues of living life (as a bright) in general?
- Are your insights on contemporary matters practical – do you think they would actually be useful to others?
- Do you love to write and are pretty sure you are doggone good at it?
- Do you think you are “in sync” with the overall thrust of The Brights’ Net’s aims and principles?
If much of that above sounds a lot like you, then please read further to see if your interest in writing would be an easy fit for our blog site, or not. Not everyone who has interest would make a good match, so what follows is a discussion to let you read about the basis for which we are making room for blogging at the Brights’ site. Mull it over, please.
If after reading the text beyond my message you think your writings would be a great match, then please email your proposal. (One must, in advance, be reasonably persuasive regarding aptitude and commitment).Longstanding Brights who enjoy and rather regularly read the Bulletins are especially invited to consider their qualifications, capabilities and interests with respect to goals for the BloggingBrights site.
Thanks, Mynga Futrell
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Criteria and Considerations
The Brights’ Net is amenable to hosting to blog a small number of Brights whose interests are well aligned with the overall intent of the site and who can issue soundly based opinions. Viable candidates must also be able to sustain a commitment to produce material at a reasonable frequency.
Especially sought are Brights who can write in a way that suggests their overall satisfaction and contentment with having a supernatural-free outlook on the world. They’d be able to not just express interesting and worthy points of view, but also to engender a goodly supply of constructive sentiment. (An overall attitude can help to overcome the unfortunate stereotype of a gloomy or dispirited person who – in the absence of supernatural entities/forces playing a role in one’s life – finds life lacking in meaning and purpose or capacity for fulfillment.)
Besides living a life wholly supernatural-free, each blogger would have a general leitmotif so that their contributions fall within or center on a realm of expertise. Credentials, although pertinent, are not a requirement. Authenticity is.
At Brights Central, we want to publish information, opinion, and ideas not from just anyone who has a worldview free of supernatural, but from those who can best counter stereotypical perspectives and help broaden civic understanding of the naturalistic worldview. The Brights’ Net is not trying to proselytize the naturalistic outlook but to increase civic regard for the individuals who have such a worldview.
A Grounding
The stated aims of The Brights movement are expressed in The Brights’ Net’s tagline: “to illuminate and elevate the naturalistic worldview”— illuminate, and elevate. This was the chosen concept from a survey of registrants conducted previously. It is hoped that those who contribute to the BloggingBrights site will keep these overarching goals in mind as they focus on two specific parameters of the blog.
To better illuminate various forms of the naturalistic worldview
Clarify/illuminate/brighten : One aspiration of the Brights initiative is helping folks understand just what it is to have a wholesome and personally gratifying naturalistic outlook on life. When free to talk about having that worldview, we can produce a better overall civic understanding for everyone.To elevate civic respect for individuals who have such a worldview
Lift/elevate/up! — The other aspect is striving to further in society the civic position of the citizens who have such a worldview. This shifts focus to aspects of social acceptance, civic parity (or disenfranchisement), recognition of comparable moral fiber to supers, etc.
Here’s the first main point: Citizens the world over who have a naturalistic worldview are so often viewed as lacking in morals that they are treated as second class citizens (or worse). We hope bloggers can point out – and urge actions to change – these unfair circumstances. That is, we want to “embrighten” the overall situation by taking on a civics perspective relatively free (as best we can) of the religion game.
Here’s the second: We also would like bloggers to be able to speak about what it’s like viewing the world through eyes wide open to “the real world” as informed by science. Supernatural entities and mystical forces play no role. Humanity and all the rest of the natural world do.
A great many Brights consider themselves atheists or agnostics (a primary identity label for them), at least with respect to their views about a deity, or deities. But having a naturalistic worldview involves more than that, and the overall outlook is all too seldom talked about. Frankly, there are many aspects of having a supernatural-free worldview that are not derived from its cultural relation to religion(s), although the cultural battles continually infuse because they are so intrusive onto citizenship and acceptance.
A Departure
Concept: We want to provide readers with a something distinctive.
(That is, could this blog site please be different?)
It is likely that some of the territory seemingly owned and claimed by religion, is actually territory that can benefit from religion-free framing and terminology. However, that same realm is less frequently viewed or discussed in a secular manner. For example, human morality in many cultures is territory seemingly “staked out” and possessed by religion, but it shouldn’t be. There are naturalistic ways to view that topic, and a great many others as well. Also, a naturalistic outlook can be expressed in the more human-rights/civil rights/science knowledge-oriented realm without a writer taking on a burdensome “nonbeliever” status. We’d like writers who want to give that angle a try.
The “religion/beliefs” realm (especially deity-belief vs. nonbelief; religious vs. nonreligious citizens, religionists vs. secularists) is already generally well-covered elsewhere by writers that range from dull to superb! Such site terrain is generally termed, “freethought,” and it is represented on aggregate sites such as freethoughtblogs.com (hosting 35 writers) and in numerous independent blog sites, such as The Friendly Atheist. Countering theism and religious privileging in society are generally central to the thrust. After all, dominant religion is a counterpoint to which freethought is positioned (as breaking free). Thus, religion continues to seemingly “own” the territory and the language.
To give a different tone and texture to the material on the BloggingBrights blog, we’re hoping the few insightful contributors will be quite comfortable with focusing primarily on other aspects of having a naturalistic worldview. This probably entails speaking in more secular language and taking fairly evident retreats from religion-centered terrain to explore how a naturalistic outlook plays out in terms of other aspects of society and general welfare.
In taking this divergence from the usual, it is hoped that blog content can appeal beyond brights out there in the world. Perhaps it will attract some supers to read it as well. Both types of citizens can be amenable and supportive of social and civic parity for their fellow citizens.
Consequently, we especially invite – and would expect to retain as contributors – any writers who can actually surmount the “beliefs and religion” morass, delving into their issues with a clear-eyed and thoughtful perspective and employing a civics-oriented and secular vocabulary.
These writers will show their concerns for social acceptance and equitable treatment for people who have a naturalistic worldview from the grounds of humanity, equality, democracy, etc. Rather than miring their material in the familiar terminology of religion vs. nonreligion, they will make their content informative and educational for both sides of that believer/nonbeliever coin.
Back to topProposing to Blog at “BloggingBrights”
Please put all your information together in one email. In your proposal:
- Provide all your contact information, including phone (or Skype) please.
- Send along your own vision (that is, the theme and/or “leading ideas” for your writing plan, along with some evidence (or description) of “on what authority” you’d wish to speak within that domain.
- And, if you can show yourself through a relevant writing sample or two to provide worthwhile content while being something other than a grouch, then all the better. (In fact, that would brighten the matter altogether.)
Email the-brights@the-brights.net with the subj. line: “ME2BLOG?”
