A Citizen of Earth

September 9, 2015

Hillary and Bernie and Joe, Oh My

All the Bernie supporters on my friends list, I honor your liking for your candidate, and I’m VERY GLAD he’s running. I’m glad he’s saying all the things he’s saying, and I’m glad there are people who love him. I truly feel he’s shifting the ground of discussion in the United States, and I love the direction it’s going.

But to me his candidacy has the feel of a mad, crazy pep rally for a team that can’t win. Look at the numbers. JOE BIDEN is passing Bernie nationally in this poll. And Biden is not even running, not even pretending to run.

Vice President Joe Biden has surpassed Bernie Sanders for second place in the democratic primary race according to a new nationwide poll from Monmouth University. Biden, despite not being a candidate and not running a campaign, now has twenty-two percent of the vote, edging past Sanders who is now in third place at twenty percent. Meanwhile frontrunner Hillary Clinton still retains forty-two percent, giving her a two-to-one margin over both potential competitors.

… the news may be troubling for Sanders, who despite being significantly behind nationally for the entire race, had up to now been able to point to momentum as the best thing going for his hopes.

… But it’s eye opening that at least one poll now lists upstart Bernie Sanders in third place, while suggesting that Joe Biden’s potential entry into the race wouldn’t negatively impact the massive nature of Hillary Clinton’s primary lead.

I’m not asking you to switch allegiances. I’m not asking you to love Hillary Clinton. I am asking you to think seriously about what you’ll do on Election Day.

If it’s not Bernie up there, I hope you’ll swallow your disappointment and vote. I hope you’ll understand that MOST of what you hear about Hillary — maybe most of what you THINK about her — is the result of 15 years of lies by FOX News, Rush Limbaugh, and every other lying mouthpiece on the right. A lot of that is pure misogyny — the real kind — just like the pure racism that Barack Obama has faced since he appeared on the national scene.

She’s a great candidate, she’ll make a good president. I’m convinced she’ll follow in Barack Obama’s footsteps and continue moving the country in a positive direction. I think she’ll be HISTORIC, just as Obama is historic.

And if nothing else, remind yourself that we can’t afford ANY of the rotten GOP demagogues now running to get into the White House. I’d like to see the whole sordid lot of Republicans swept out of Congress and sent back home to run tire stores or ambulance-chasing law offices.

Keep supporting Bernie. But don’t talk Hillary down. Support her at least enough not to spread the lies and hate. Hell, make an effort to see the good side of her, the good things she’s done, her strengths as a candidate. And if she’s the candidate chosen to run, VOTE FOR HER. I’ll bet Bernie Sanders will.

August 31, 2015

Musings on the Nature of Mind

Anyone paying attention in the last few decades of life on Earth can’t help but think there’s something wrong in the human world. It’s something that doesn’t and, I suspect, can’t work.

I’ve thought many times this unworkable bit is our own understanding of ourselves. As in: We think we are one way, we expect ourselves and our fellows to be this one way, and yet we are very different from it. Which means a great deal of what we think of as the “should be” of human life is wrong. We get right answers about ourselves – about how we should live, how we should treat each other or the natural world – only by accident. In the main, things continue to go wrong, progressively worsening over and over through the cycles of history until we suffer each new catastrophic, civilization-wide disaster.

I wonder …

We think of ourselves, when we think of ourselves, as conscious beings. And yet most of us is UNconscious. Meaning that the real essence of what we are is, in the main, invisible to us.

We talk about our “subconscious” as if it’s some minor apparatus that does these mysterious and not-very-important things off in the darkness, but in truth, this subconscious is the largest part of us. It’s consciousness that’s the sideshow, the also-ran, the comical sidekick, the small spotlighted area of a vast, dark stage. Consciousness is an app that runs on a much larger, much more complex underlying brainframe. It does certain things very well, but only those things.

It’s also a sort of distraction. We wallow in the attraction of consciousness and ignore this huge other part. Because consciousness is what it is – the self-referential noticing and knowing of one’s conscious self – it almost by definition must exclude notice of the unknowable parts. Even understanding that we are NOT conscious for some large part of our day – in sleep, in the sort of muzzy reverie that accompanies “automatic” actions such as driving or eating, and even in the machinations that go on all the time below conscious notice – we can still fail to credit our unconscious selves. Yet because we are conscious – because we position our apparent Selfness in our small conscious zone rather than this much larger unconscious part – we are necessarily unable to imagine anything different.

Most of the endeavors of Earth life are done without anything we think of when we think of conscious mind. I observe animals doing their specific things out there in the wilds – beavers that build dams, birds that build complex woven nests, all sorts of wonderful and complex creative endeavors – and the only thing I can compare them to in the human sphere is those rare and near-unbelievable savant talents in autistics. Most animals live without consciousness, and we tend to see them as lesser and limited because of it, yet they do these amazing things – not just with mundane regularity, but with brains in some cases hundreds of times smaller. What looks out of their eyes is not a “me” in the way we have a “me,” but a silent sort of machine, beastly in nature and yet marvelously capable of conducting its survival in the unimaginably complex surround of wild nature.

I wonder if civilization itself isn’t an artifact of consciousness, a perpetually conscio-centric socio-cultural structure that could only be possible to beings who have this add-on “Me” app.

I wonder too if we haven’t made a very basic mistake in creating this sort of civilization. If, as I suspect, we’ve built civilization according to conscious needs, conscious mandates, largely ignoring our larger, quieter, apparently more secret selves, we have, in a way, built something that isn’t quite human – worse, something that can’t work for humans as a whole.

To us here in civilization, the subconscious is “other,” something separate from and subordinate to – or rebellious from – the real you, the real me. The relationship is one of separation rather than of solidarity, cooperation, or wholeness.

Given the nature of consciousness, I doubt we could have done any different, here in our infancy. But I imagine that if we recognize the subconscious as the main “us” – if we built entertainments and accommodations meant to nurture and comfort our larger selves, and societal understandings that recognized and accepted this Self-Other in our fellow men – a lot of things would become possible, both within our individual selves and in the larger world.

Such as this bit that isn’t looking good at the moment – the survival of the lot of us.

August 30, 2015

Beta Culture: Mapping the Parasites

St Johns — St. John’s Church — Schenectady NY

Here’s a little idle exercise: Open up Google Maps, and put this word in the search window: “churches.”

Wait for it to do its thing, and you will see the map fill up with little red dots, like the worst case of chicken pox you ever saw.

Look at the lower right of the map for the scale, and zoom on your town to where the “one mile” is about an inch long. Zoom out to where that same scale says “five miles.” You’ll see that the entire countryside is … infected.

Zoom out a bit more, to where each inch represents “20 miles,” and think of each red dot as a parasite, feeding on some sort of prey. You’ll notice how they congregate thickly around cities and towns, but there’s never a part of the countryside that is completely without one nearby.

Now leave the map where it is, but change the search word to “schools.” The red dots diminish in number — not a lot, fortunately, but there are definitely fewer — and spread out more evenly across the map.

A few years back, I went into the Schenectady County tax assessor’s office and looked up churches and church-owned properties within a 2-mile radius of my house. In a town of about 60,000 people, there are CLOSE TO 80 of them. They cluster thickly in the city core, on some of the most valuable property around. Farther out, they occupy large tracts of land, like millionaire estates, with buildings that range from the industrial chic of recent years to soaring castlelike structures built with artisanal opulence rarely seen today.

Just sayin’.

I hope one day there will be at least ONE Beta Culture Nexus in each town, a friendly, empowering alternative to these parasitic temples of worship.

And here’s Schenectady’s pox:

August 22, 2015

Random Tidbits

Telling Your Own Story

I have this very strong feeling that each person must “tell his own story,” and that others around him should honor that. For instance, if a friend tells me “I really like that little Jewish girl down the street,” or “I sure don’t like that lemon strawberry cake that Aunt Nita makes. I wish I could tell her but I don’t want to hurt her feelings,” in each case that’s HIS story, and not mine. If he wants to tell his story to others, he will, but it’s not my place to spread around that story. I might WANT to – maybe go to Aunt Nita and say “Nita, I’m not sure Bobby likes that cake. He seems to choke it down each time, but I don’t think he likes it.” Or tell the Jewish man down the street, “Ha! Bobby Summers told me he wants to bang your daughter!”

Or I might tell people “Hey, did you know Bobby Summers has an IQ of 80? I saw the test scores on the teacher’s desk! I thought that guy was just quiet, but it’s because he’s so stupid he can’t keep up with the conversation!”

Or I might whisper “Bobby Summers told me he’s gay! Did you know that? I can’t believe it! Oh, man, wait’ll I tell the others!”

In every case, what I say will change the relationship between Bobby and others – not because of something Bobby might want, but just as a side effect of something >>I<< have done. In each case, I’ve taken the choice out of his hands by telling HIS story. I’ve stolen away some of his freedom.

This is not about saying good things or bad things about people, it’s about who has the right to tell the good things or bad things.

In the cases above, it’s better for me to keep my mouth shut. I might tell people “I like that Bobby Summers. He’s a damned hard worker and a true friend.” Or “Seems to me Bobby Summers can drive a car better than anybody I ever met. I think he should be a professional driver!” Or “That lame-ass bastard Summers was late to work today, forcing me to work overtime.” That’s me sharing stuff that includes Bobby, but I’m telling MY story, a part in which Bobby plays a role.

But in all the personal stuff, the things in which Bobby should be free to make his own choices, it’s better to let Bobby tell the thing, or not tell it, and have each situation and relationship go on as HE chooses for it to go on.

Tell YOUR story. Let others tell THEIR story.

_________________________

The Tribes of Man and Woman

Speculation: In every time and place, there’s a Guy Culture and a Gal Culture, with different mandates in each. Guys have some say over Guy Culture, women have some say over Gal Culture, but ordinarily neither has any say over the other.

For a girl to be fully accepted in Gal Culture, she has to do and say and think the Gal things. For a boy to be fully accepted in Guy Culture, he has to do and say and think the Guy things. There’s an intersection culture in which both boys and girls fit, but there are also these distinct side cultures.

I suspect there’s a certain evolutionary necessity that creates and maintains these two cultures, that being a part of Guy Culture is a vital part of a boy’s growing up to be a man, and ditto for Gal Culture and girls.

The Internet flattens things out gender-culturally, so that jokes that might usually be told exclusively in Guy company, or thoughts that might formerly be expressed exclusively in Gal surroundings, are now – if they are shared online, that is – opened out in front of everybody. Which brings some interesting pressures to bear on both.

As of now, the side cultures haven’t disappeared. For instance, there are jokes and thoughts and observations I tell only my close male friends – things I deliberately do NOT say online – and I know there are things women say to each other that men don’t get to hear.

But it would be cool to jump ahead a thousand years or so and see what the two cultures look like, or even if they’ve survived, to see what social or personal pressures the situation brings to men and women of the time.

August 14, 2015

Get Your Motor Runnin’: Reason Riders Going National

If you are 1), an atheist, and 2) ride a motorcycle, you seriously need to join and support Reason Riders.

I first wrote about the idea of an atheist motorcycle club a little more than two years ago. I tinkered up a rough logo and a name — Reason Riders — and just dropped it out there.

Pierino Walker picked up on it soon after, redesigning the logo and turning it into patches for his motorcycle jacket. He sent me a couple, and supplied them for fellow riders in Northern California and elsewhere.

Brian Christian, fellow rider in Buckeye, Arizona, joined in, and the two are now co-founders, stepping up the pace to take the idea national.

Christian has a Meetup group — Reason Riders of Western Arizona — and hosts road trips for enthusiasts in his state. Walker rides in northern California.

Apparently it’s common for riders to be known either by their last name or a road name. As the leader of a group of atheist motorcycle riders, and ironically named Christian, Brian’s riders have given him the road name “Bishop.” So:

There is a Reason Riders Facebook page, where riders post announcements of cross-country rides and pics of bikes and friends, as well as thoughts on atheism, religion, life and such.

Anyone interested in joining — either as riders or as organizers for local chapters — can contact the two founders (who are also local-chapter Presidents) either through the Facebook page or via email:

Walker: ktown1213 [at] gmail.com
Bishop: darknightdad [at] gmail.com

There will be additional Reason Riders swag coming soon, but meanwhile you can order the large back patches, shown below, from Bishop.

Look for a near-future post on the group’s Mission Statement, but don’t let that stop you from RIGHT NOW becoming a part of the world’s only, first-ever Godless Atheist Motorcycle Group.

Side Note: Speaking of riding clubs, Bishop clued me in to an important point that I wasn’t aware of, but that riders thinking about joining in — or forming a chapter in their home territory — should know. There is a neighborly etiquette regarding already-established riding groups and motorcycle clubs in each area. Anyone forming a group in their area will want to introduce themselves to the local clubs, maybe take a few rides with them, before leaping out onto the road with the new patch. It’s an important issue with all the large clubs, and not one to be taken lightly if we want Reason Riders to find its own place out there.

And when Reason Riders goes INTERnational, you’ll see it here first.

front back

July 18, 2015

Non Sequitur, With Prominent Thumb

I saw an actual hitchhiker a few days ago! A young woman stood on the side of the highway entrance ramp holding a sign that said NORTH. I was in my company van and couldn’t offer a ride, but I rolled down the passenger side window and yelled “Good luck!”

Talking to a friend later, we compared notes on how rare it is to see hitchhikers these days, and yet how much safer the country is today than, say, 40 years ago when I was doing so much of it.

In my hitchhiking days, I compiled 26,000 miles by actual count on long road trips, probably a good 10 to 25 percent more in short trips I didn’t count. Add another 550 for the time I hopped a ride on a freight train from El Paso, Texas to (I think I recall) Yuma, Arizona, and the total could be close to 33,000 miles — the equivalent of 10 or 11 crossings of the United States.

In 15 years or so of hitching, I got only a handful of scary rides, some from drunk people, a couple from really pushy gays, and one from a guy I’m convinced might have killed me if things had worked out differently. I was young, in shape and strong, but overall, I think it was just that the world, even back then, contained a very small percentage of bad people.

Most of the people who picked me up were just lonely on long trips, innately gregarious, or paying back kindnesses from their own lives. The job of a hitchhiker, I soon discovered, is to be good company, to listen to the driver’s tall tales, and sometimes to help keep the guy awake.

Re: Tall tales. I must have heard this story at least 20 times over the years. “Me and my two buddies had just gotten out of the Navy and we were hitching home from San Diego together when this motor home pulled over, with three beautiful women inside headed for a week in Las Vegas.”

I always believed them. To this day, I imagine there’s a big lush motorhome cruising the highways of America, three women in their 70s inside, looking for a trio of sailors standing on the roadside, perpetually headed for a never-to-be-forgotten week in Las Vegas.

July 16, 2015

Did God Mess With Biology’s Roots?

I’ve said many times that the true, full effect religion has had on human society is not something any of us is really equipped to notice. It’s so … everywhere … that we have little to contrast with it in order to clearly see the damage.

Even science, which escaped the grasp of religion and went off to change the world in ways religion could never have managed, still — in my view, anyway — suffers aftereffects. For instance:

Here’s a pretty good article about something humans and beasts have in common — thoughts and feelings.

Carl Safina Makes A Case for Anthropomorphism

The subtitle, in my view, is more correct, though:

The marine biologist’s latest book uses science to show that animals, like people, have complex inner lives.

I would argue that “anthropomorphism” is a mistaken word, a mistaken concept. It springs from an error injected into biology at its founding. The mistake — the belief in a separate creation for humans alongside the more general magicking into existence of the “birds and beasts” — was a religious one. Because Christianity was the paradigm of the day, Western biologists had no way to know it was a mistake, and automatically assumed humans were totally different from all other forms of life. Which would mean that attributing “human-like” characteristics to animals would be viewed as automatically wrong unless you could present masses of evidence for it. Which is what we’ve had to do for the couple of hundred years since.

On the other hand, if that starting slant was that humans evolved from common roots with all other life forms, a more workable initial view would be to assume similarity, and lots of it. Anyone asserting we had nothing in common with other forms of life, THEY would be the ones who’d have to present masses of evidence.

Our similar traits — feelings, a sense of self, grieving, so much more — aren’t “anthropomorphic.” They’re part of a non-anthro common heritage, handed down to humans from earlier sources. Specific traits possessed exclusively by humans would have to have evolved only very recently and are likely minuscule, something like the tiny capstone on a pyramid, compared to the massive block of similarity below. That similarity occurs in areas as diverse as body mechanics and function, biochemistry, neurology, behavior, and yes, thoughts and feelings. It took us hundreds of years to begin to really understand that, when it could have been a founding principle of biology.

On a side note, the question of “language” always comes up in these discussions, and though I can’t clearly point at religion as a root cause, I see it as the same sort of a mistake. The capacity for language might have originated with us, but communication didn’t. Communication, the conveying of information from one animal to another, that’s something pretty much everything on two legs or four does. (And it’s not always aimed at, or received only by, members of one’s own species.) Bird calls and fox barks MEAN something; when they don’t wish to convey information to the world around them, animals are generally silent. Dogs convey messages all the time to their owners — in body posture, ear position, tail movement, and vocalizations — and it seems to me that most of it is deliberate. The question of intentionality is certainly worth examining in each case, but the basic truth of communication seems undeniable.

July 15, 2015

Beta Culture: Dealing With Conservatives

Had a little epiphany today about the sense of humor, and why ultra-conservatives don’t seem to have much of it.

Humor requires a certain flexibility of mind, a capacity to quickly change mental directions. The lead-in to a joke sets up a certain expectation, then the punchline forces a radical departure from that expectation. The unexpectedness makes us laugh.

A Hasidic Jew walks into a New York City bar with a frog on his shoulder. The bartender says “Where the heck did you get THAT?” The frog says “New Jersey! They’re all over the place down there!”

But if you’re an ultra-conservative, you don’t like unexpectedness. It’s like being an extreme introvert and getting thrust into a surprise birthday party. Ultra-conservatives don’t have that mental flexibility — it’s why they’re ultra-conservatives. It’s not just that they don’t want to learn anything new, don’t want to change, don’t want to try new foods or experiences or ideas, and don’t want things around them to change, it’s that they can’t. They can’t handle it. Can’t deal with difference and newness.

I’ve toyed with the idea of something I call the “adaptive limit” in humans. People who grow up in an environment that encourages adaptability, continued learning and growth and experimentation, they have a high adaptive limit. Those who grow up in conditions of fear or stress have a low adaptive limit. Whatever one’s adaptive limit, anyone who has their limit exceeded by too much stress, trauma or pressure, they shut down and react mechanically rather than creatively or openly. They play out trusted mental patterns or reactions from the past, because they literally can’t come up with anything new.

We beat on Southerners and religious people for being “stupid” and “hateful,” but I sometimes think a better approach would be one of … kindness and understanding. Not acceptance — bad ideas and behavior don’t stop being bad. But an understanding that takes into account their limits, limits unsuspected even by themselves. They’re not bad, necessarily — they’re wounded. They have something like PTSD just from everyday life, and need a more compassionate approach to helping them open back up and begin to grow again.

And maybe a lot of them never will. Maybe — from damage too great to heal or the inflexibility of age — they’re just not up to it.

When you’re facing one of those people — with your own automatic belief that you’re dealing with a responsible adult — it’s tough to step back from their negative reaction and consider that you’re dealing with someone who is probably doing the best they can, and needs compassion rather than reactive anger.

With my impatient nature, I’m probably one of the worst people to tell others to be more compassionate and understanding. But strategically, I can see great value in the larger atheist community working out approaches to dealing with certain populations that will take into account their adaptive limits, and reactions they probably have little control over.

________________

And now I’m thinking of certain inflexible and even somewhat irrational people on the liberal end of the spectrum, and it occurs to me there can be liberal-trending people who also suffer from exceeded adaptive limits.

July 13, 2015

One Billion Atheists: The Army of the Other Side

Look at this:

Evangelicals Aim to Mobilize an Army for Republicans in 2016

One afternoon last week, David Lane watched from the sidelines as a roomful of Iowa evangelical pastors applauded a defense of religious liberty by Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. That night, he gazed out from the stage as the pastors surrounded Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana in a prayer circle.

For Mr. Lane, a onetime Bible salesman and self-described former “wild man,” connecting the pastors with two likely presidential candidates was more than a good day’s work. It was part of what he sees as his mission, which is to make evangelical Christians a decisive power in the Republican Party.

“An army,” he said. “That’s the goal.”

And Mr. Lane is positioning himself as a field marshal. A fast-talking and born-again veteran of conservative politics with experience in Washington, Texas and California, Mr. Lane, 60, travels the country trying to persuade evangelical clergy members to become politically active.

That’s what we’re facing.

What Mr. Lane, a former public relations man, does have going for him is a decentralized landscape in which a determined believer with an extensive network of ground-level evangelical leaders and a limitless capacity for talking on the phone can exert influence on Republican presidential candidates eager to reach evangelical voters.

I used to go to town council meetings in my little mountain town and sometimes almost burst into delighted laughter at seeing the hidden political mechanics in action. I HATED the sonsofbitches and what they were doing, but I marveled at the coordination, the deftness of manipulation of the public sentiment, the streamlined perfection of the lies.

Seeing it was a daily lesson in political strategy in a small town, and beyond.

Nothing they did was done for the people of the town or the surrounding mountain environment. It was purely extractive and manipulative — a roofied drink and a followup rape in every sense but the sexual. But damn, they were good at it.

I don’t want us to ever forget that this is out there, working day and night to take advantage with lies and subterfuge, to wrest the future out of our hands and make it theirs again. To wreak short-term profit by keeping the world as it is.

July 12, 2015

One Billion Atheists: Two Additional Ideas

As the name of the hoped-for movement states, my interest in the free-thought spectrum is this one specific thing: Atheism. Everything else flows from that, in my view, and a coordinated effort to empower and expand atheism will throw off benefits to every one of the sub-genres of the larger field of free-thought.

Regarding which, here are a couple of ideas I’d toss into the mix for One Billion Atheists by 2025:

Atheist Leadership Academy

Years back when I was working on a magazine in It-Shall-Remain-Nameless Town, there was this thing I was invited to apply to, the Nameless Town Leadership Academy.

You had to be sponsored, and my boss sponsored me. You have to fill out a lengthy application, and I filled out the lengthy application. You had to wait while a large Most Secret Membership Board studied your application, read your applicant essay, evaluated your educational and financial credentials — hell, for all I know checked your socks and underwear drawer for its highly-indicative April-fresh scent — and then weighed in on whether or not you were proper Nameless Town material. —I wasn’t.

It looked like nothing so much as a school for wannabe-rich Republicans. They had annual classes of 25 who paid dearly for the privilege of being lectured, led, and groomed in the philosophy of the radically pro-business founders and cheerleaders of the thing, all under the guise of “community service.” It seemed like not a week passed that the local newspaper didn’t have a picture of the smiling students posing with local power-suited bankers and real estate agents, developers and elected officials, at the site of the next development, the next big deal, the next Great Big Social Concern.

NOTHING happened in the town without their approval and involvement. If you weren’t aligned with them, you were a protester, a nutcase, a nobody, relegated to the backwaters of Nameless Town flow.

Say what you will, they got things done. Now and again, some of it was even objectively good.

There are lots of other such organizations across the U.S. and, I assume, the rest of the world — both private groups and corporate entities that serve as trainers of such groups.

Which is good reason for the Atheist movement to try it — a coordinated effort aimed at turning out educated, aware, involved and motivated atheist leaders in every city, state, country and corner of the world. Leading, coaching, training, conferring, problem solving, assisting in creating stronger, more focused and more strategic activism worldwide.

Something else should happen first, though. A …

Strategic Planning Conference

The goal of a Strategic Planning Conference would be to discuss and agree on strategy, both worldwide and regionally — Europe, North America, South America, Asia, and especially the Muslim world — for the next 10 to 20 years.

So far, atheist leaders, what there are of them, are a pretty scattered bunch. There are activists within the free-thought movement who champion science and reason, transgender rights, racial equality, feminism, gender equality, activism in the Muslim world, a great deal more — either as separate issues or en masse. There are bloggers and blog commenters, book writers, professional scientists, university professors, philosophers, speakers, artists, comedians, musicians, videographers, lawyers and clients, swag merchants, local organizations, and a great deal more (see the upcoming post on Reason Riders motorcycle club!) — not to mention the huge audience of readers, convention attendees, book buyers and quiet, private rebels.

The effect is definite, but far slower and less directed than it might be. I worry that the entire thing is fragile in certain critical ways, that a single catastrophic event could set the clock back on free-thought consolidation by years, decades, or even longer. (*)

Certainly all of these people talk to each other at conferences and events, in scattershot emails and calls, and certainly local groups tend to work together on fundraising and events. But as far as coordinated large-scale action, I’m not seeing it.

I’ll freely admit I’m out of the loop on major atheist events of the past couple of years. After my Dad died, my reading of many of the major atheist blogs and organizational communiques dropped off.

But again, I don’t see the world-spanning, cross-border organizational action I’d like to see. The Richard Dawkins Foundation comes closest to what I have in mind, but I don’t know that even they have organized the sort of planning conferences I imagine, seeking to take some of the disparate voices of the movement and aim them at a large-scale uber-goal such as One Billion Atheists by 2025.

I would dearly love to see it. It would be even better to be a part of it.

( * I also worry at the trend which consolidates major voices of the movement into blog networks aimed at income rather than broader matters. I’ve seen good blogs descend into the rapid-fire posting of outrage click-bait rather than the calmer ideation and analysis that informs and educates readers to the benefit of the larger movement. )