The best-laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley, said the Scottish poet Robert Burns in 1785. Burns, as the plowman, destroys the nest of a mouse who then has no resources or wherewithal to rebuild it over the winter. Burns, as the plowman, rues his own plans that have often gone awry. The mouse is the lucky one as it has no concept of the past or the future and lives only in the present. The man, on the other hand, understands past predicaments and future dreads.
Here at OnlySky, the people who took a punt on an audacious project to change the media landscape and reflect the views, lifestyles, and stories of the nonreligious, have had their own plans for a secular media future be scuppered. Alas, funding for tech and media startups is as rare as rocking horse shit. Moreover, online and print media concerns are trying to navigate the most dangerous waters. You only have to look at how Vice has just imploded into a financial black hole.
So it comes with great sadness to declare that what we have tried to do here, with a vision that ended up being greater than our means, is coming to a premature close. In a saturated media space where income streams for both small and large organizations are frantically fought over in a zero-sum game, our chances were always on the slim side.
At its height, OnlySky—with a slick design and feel—attracted an enviable range of incredibly talented writers and storytellers. Because it was largely about telling stories and not just reporting on news items or philosophically arguing over the existence of God, the idea of nonreligious narratives has been in our very DNA.
Of late, we have been operating with a skeleton crew while trying to read a bleak map to work out our destination, any destination that offered existential hope. American Atheists were incredible in keeping us afloat for as long as they did, and we are so very grateful that they stepped in to help us out in our time of need.
Alas, we have reached the edge of the map. None of us quite know where the next destination is, but all of us will continue rowing in our own lifeboats to see whether we come to rest on a paradise island or get picked up by an ocean liner.
I, for one, am very proud of the writing that we have all produced here. From a personal point of view, this has included some of the best writing I could ever have imagined committing to digital paper. Indeed, if I don’t thank Dale McGowan, then I would not be able to live with myself. As an editor and a human being, he is right up there. One day, our paths will cross and we will sip piña coladas from coconut shells together, with our feet resting on the edge of our boats. But until that moment, cheers mate. From the bottom of my heart. May the sun shine on your life in the meantime. You know, that big shiny thing in the only sky.
Everyone here has been a pleasure to know and work with, and for some, this may well continue in some way, shape, or form.
American Atheists have kindly offered to assist us in migrating our writing to wherever it needs to go. I have quite a considerable corpus of work here and am not sure where I will take it. There has been a kind offer from a fellow writer here to set up shop with them, or the option of Substack, or perhaps even approaching a platform like Freethought Blogs. Or I could go solo somewhere.
What is definitely certain is that my feature articles here will become a book, since there is a lot of content that I think justifies being thrown out into the wider world in a permanent form of sorts.
If I were to work really hard to explain the outcome we have found ourselves with here at OnlySky in the most positive way possible, then it would be that the “nones” in modern society, we heathens, have become so normalized (particularly in American culture) that the job here is done. We no longer need to fight for political representation. But, of course, that is patent nonsense. Rather, we still desperately need nones-sense. With a Supreme Court in the US that is a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic, and a political system where practically no one is old enough to declare themselves an open atheist, there is work to do.
So. Much. Work.
“Here be dragons” it reads. Of course, there are no such thing as dragons. Instead, cumbersome, monolithic, half-fossilized dinosaurs still manage to roam the lands around these parts, or slither submerged through the murky waters. With outdated views of yesteryear, they still try to capsize our boats and drag us down into the depths of the Fundamentalist Ocean.
How long must we be wary? Sadly, too long. But we can’t get weary. There is too much on the line. Moral progression is a double-edged sword: The higher we climb, the further we can fall if someone yanks too hard on our rope.
So the fight goes on.
It has been a pleasure to fight alongside my fellow combatants in this philosophical and political war, armed with words and voices, loaded with fingertips on keyboards. I am incredibly grateful to the readers who have graced my articles with their wisdom and tenacity. You know who you are. I know who you are. And unsuspecting interlocutors have experienced who you are. Pat yourselves on the back. Heck, this weekend, join me in a tipple and a wee touch of philosophy. Or a cuppa if you are that way inclined. I will raise a glass to you, all you good good people.
For without you, there would have been no me.
Come help me be me, wherever that may be, and I will help you be you, and voice your inner worldview.
In the meantime, you can find Jonathan MS Pearce at his YouTube home of ATP Geopolitics where he routinely posts analyses of global events.