Gonetoghana’s Weblog

I was looking at the moon last night, and it got me thinking.  What was it like to live before man had been to the moon?  Before we knew it was nothing more than a ball of empty craters reflecting the sun?  How much more mysterious was existence before we had so many mechanical scientific data retrieving technological information sharing satellites littering the night sky?  Before MTV had permeated every corner of the globe and taught people how to dress and act?  Before plastic was invented and carelessly discarded into the last place of discovery on earth?  Before the “American dream” became the world’s dream and traditional ways of life that held ecology in balance were forgotten?

Don’t get me wrong, I still find the moon absolutely amazing.  And I find science absolutely amazing.  This is coming from the girl who wanted to be an astronaut when she was 7.  But what was it really like to land on the moon?  Do you think Neil Armstrong was disappointed?  What, no little green alien dudes to welcome us and explain the workings of the universe?  Just a vast, barren landscape.  And what exactly was this “giant leap for mankind”?  An American flag staked, Direct TV, cell phones, Google earth?  All pretty cool, but I’m not quite convinced it was such an advancement for humanity as a whole.

And why are we so interested in outer space?  If it’s about the unknown, we can find that in our oceans and rain forests.  The cure for cancer could be disappearing at this very moment, and we’re more interested in frozen water on Mars.  What do we think, life is so dispensable that when we use up this planet we can go on to another one?  Or do we really have some secret agreement with aliens that if we spend billions upon billions to make it look like they don’t exist, in the process neglecting our planet and exterminating ourselves, they’ll leave us alone?  Talk about a catch-22.

So, all conspiracy theories aside, why are we always looking outward?   Why do we overlook mysteries in our hands and attempt to demystify pinpricks that are light-years away in the sky?  Is it our obsession with heaven, an afterlife, aliens, the origins of our existence?  Or is it a competition to be the first where “no man has been before”?  I’ll be the first to say that solar systems, black holes, nebulae and all are incomprehensibly amazing.  But isn’t a blooming flower?  An ant?  Being alive itself?  Could it be that in our race to discover the furthest reaches of the universe, we’ve missed something vitally important that was right in our faces all along?