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Scribe
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Utah
Posts: 78
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The Last Sight You Saw (you did not see)
This was more or less a writing exercise -- I needed something to make me think. Haven't been around much lately, life is life, as many of you know.
One must wonder if this should be under fiction, considering.
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The Last Sight You Saw (you did not see)
The moon is made of cheese, as they say. There are numerous individuals who truly believe that this seemingly ridiculous thought is an undeniable fact. If there are people who do not realize -- or refuse to realize -- what others profess to be the one, undeniable truth, then the elements of personal truth and the perception of the scientific can ultimately lead to only one conclusion: the moon truly is made of cheese.
This "cheese moon" makes the concept of the infamous and nearly hilariously-disputed claims of a landing by NASA astronauts on this grey, floating orb quite an interesting claim, indeed. The astronauts did, in their own belief, land on the lunar object on the 20th day of July in 1969, as well as traverse small areas of its landscape. Neil Armstrong's infamous words echoed -- so to speak -- across the void of space: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." These recurring elements of personal truth and perception of the scientific in this instance lead to one unescapable conclusion: man landed, via the Apollo 11 spacecraft, on the lunar body we know solely to as the moon.
These two beliefs lead to a great contradiction: the moon, made of cheese, was landed upon by human astronauts in the Earth year of 1969. On its own, it sounds almost reasonable -- and perhaps, to some, almost believable, supposing that no personal beliefs are countered in this process of combat between belief and disbelief. However, if even simple chemistry and physics are considered, this is, quite simply, impossible. The intense heat that a rocket of the sort of Apollo 11 produces will nearly instantly melt cheese. This proves that if one of these two beliefs is true, the other cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be true. The mutual exclusivity of these two truths leads the doubter to believe that neither fact is true -- facts must not contradict with other facts, lest they no longer operate as facts or personal truths, but as mere suppositions. Both are undeniable facts of personal truth, which is, arguably, the only approachable form of any truth in a society with even the most miniscule bits of individualism or emotion.
Of course, if man did not land on the moon, one of the most vital bases of modern science is removed, and, much like a chair that has had a leg sawed off, tumble to the ground. After all, if these extremely respected scientists are suddenly proved incorrect, then one must examine all of modern science -- scientific truth from an unreliable source is no longer truth. This leads to the extremely irreverent questoin, "Is the moon really in existence at all, and not, perhaps, an optical illusion?" The evidence that the moon exists comes under the pretense that modern science -- and historical science, even -- and without that basis, there can be no reasonable assumption that the moon is what it is purported to be. Does the moon exist at all, even? After all, space is nothingness, and this moon is in space. Nothing can ever truly exist in nothingness, because once something exists within it, it is no longer nothing, and once nothing is something, the nothing that was can no longer exist. If nothing exists or can exist in the void of space, then, the moon, Earth, and Sun do not really exist. If these things we take for truth are contradicted or countered, then there can be no personal -- or even objective -- truth.
When there is no truth, then we cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, know the true nature of our existence. We must create our own definition of existence, perhaps one in which we are literally everything and what we perceive is a mere thought, or one in which we are nothing. The only option, then, is to determine our own personal existence and live it out as if we know not of anything beyond our own personal truths. Live as if our existence will simply end at any moment, and live not in fear, but in the pure emotional bliss of the emotional nature that has driven humanity. Cherish the view of the moon, for upon next waking, it may be no more.
Matthew Montgomery
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