As officially recorded in the official planetary record, “Milky Way Register,” eternally and responsibly maintained by the designated Board of Extra- Terrestrial Trustees of the Galaxy, planet Moon, in recent eons, experienced a profound catastrophic and permanent decline to the tragic and lifeless status of a mere reflective Satellite. This solar system tragedy had been surprising and disappointing to the Trustees, especially considering Planet Moon’s previous history evincing a lush, verdant landscape, teeming with a seemingly endless variety of life forms, inclusive of a substantial population of sentient beings. It was uniformly observed by all Trustees, with much concern, that the sentient inhabitants of Planet Moon, (which was formed eons before Planet Earth) despite differences in physical appearance with the earthly homo sapiens, nevertheless, bore many similarities with them in their persona.
With some numerically insignificant exceptions, the vast mainstream of the (now extinct), sentient lunar citizens, had reverently worshipped the Sun Goddess. A fissure, however, eventually developed between those who maintained that prayer services to the Goddess were properly conducted at sunrise, while other equally adamant believers insisted that the Goddess, required sunset devotions. Courts of inquisition and centuries of zealous bloody conflict ensued, resulting in casualties and great suffering. The ultimate victors, the sunrise people, banished the survivors of the vanquished sunset sect, to the dark side of the planet, necessarily incarcerated in mobile prisons which were capable of movement, synchronized with the daily shifts in location of the dark area of the lunar planet.
The victorious sunrise sect was deeply religious, maintaining that dedicated and unquestioned faith in the Sun Goddess was all that was required for existential survival. Accordingly, they vehemently and legally repressed any challenge to parochial thought, most especially condemning those miscreants who subversively engaged in “irreligious” scientific inquiry. Such discouragement was socially enforced by means of shunning, and where persistent, the penalty of banishment to the dark side.
Braving the great danger, some lunar intellectuals, secretly and persistently, carried on their studies of the lunar planet, its proximate atmosphere and its inhabitants. They were dismayed to learn that, after a great many decades of irresponsible and thoughtless industrial activity, as well as careless lifestyle of the lunar inhabitants, its rivers and streams, air, and drinking water had become dangerously polluted and was a lethal hazard for every living organism and, as well, a cause of defilement of the ambient atmosphere. Courageous attempts to inform the lunar authorities and population of these lethal dangers were disbelieved (even punished) by a society which had no tolerance for “revolutionary” doubt as to their sole reliance upon the Sun Goddess. Such ignorance and rigid adherence to superstitious faith, apparently, overcame any willingness to consider proven and empirical findings.
As the centuries progressed, the lunar population began to observe unforeseen and unnatural climatic changes, floods, major erosion and undermining of coastlines, noticeable loss of plant and animal life and assorted health problems. However, it was tolerant of such ominous phenomena based upon its unwavering faith and presumed assurance that it was the will of the Sun Goddess. Any attempts at study and amelioration of such conditions, were deemed an atheistic betrayal and severely prohibited.
The Galaxy Trustees reported that the ultimate result was that Planet Moon rapidly declined to the neutral condition of a visibly dry and lifeless rock, a satellite, whose sole significance resides in its property, as a solid, stony mass, to reflect some evening sunlight to Planet Earth. The shameful predominance of populist superstitious belief and intransigent ignorance, over empirical reality, had ultimately resulted in the demise of the planet itself, together with its flora and fauna [ inclusive of its ardent religionists.]
Such Is the tragic chronicle of our formerly witless planetary neighbor.
Wishing another happy and verdant Spring to our earthling readers, and many more.
-p.
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