For a magical moment on the late afternoon of April 8, 2024, all of Natural Evolution’s marvel, Homo sapiens, inhabiting the surface of Planet Earth from Mexico to Maine, witnessed the confirmation of the declarations of Copernicus, Galileo, and Miss Posnanski (our 4th Grade Public School Teacher) concerning the heliotropic architecture and dynamics of our Solar System. Humankind of every stripe, set aside their cups of coffee, books, microscopes, and soup ladles to witness the awe-inspiring, bizarre occurrence of the brief period of “nighttime,” imposed upon the brightly lit afternoon.
The dramatic nature of this startling heliocentric drama has eternally been a subject of fascination, terror, myth, and religious interpretation. Primitive peoples maintained various folk beliefs concerning lunar eclipses. On the American Continent, the Choctaw Nation believed that the Moon was being eaten by hungry large black squirrels and would shoot arrows, throw spears, and shout at it to make it stop. The Navajos saw it as the start of a new year. Elsewhere, the ancient Greeks believed it to be a sign of anger of the Gods. Ancient Australians believed that the total eclipse was an intimate event during which the Moon mounted the Sun. Notably, the modern, scientific understanding of the solar phenomenon seems not to have detracted from its universal fascination and the empirical recognition that such “Moon Shadows” are only a fleeting phenomenon and manifestly, not a threatening omen.
It is, however, our considered view that from the humanistic context, the significance of Man’s scientific and rational understanding of the lunar eclipse may beneficially be outweighed by its temporal, salutary effect on Mankind.
Our view has validity through its observably diverting effect on the chronic, ethnocentric, racial, sexual, and ethnic hatred that characterizes many earthlings (human beings); presumably, based on ignorance and inexperience with, and consequent reductive fear, of natural human diversity. Thematically, it is the temporal amelioration of, or diversion from this condition to which we assign a salubrious effect to the planetary phenomenon. The dark, macabre, and fearsome occurrence empirically, functions as a universal “time out,” or a temporary oasis of reprieve, not merely from the problems and responsibilities of our daily existence but, contextually and beneficially, by the focused unanimity of the entire human family, inclusive of the rich and poor, young and old, white and black, and, inclusively, otherwise. If the event were to pose an existential danger to the Planet, it was a universally inclusive danger; if the outer space players were performing properly, they were properly performing for all humankind, on a universal basis, irrespective of color of skin, ethnicity or otherwise.
It may well behoove all right-thinking Earthlings to devise some sort of regularly occurring earthly version of the “Moon Shadow” phenomenon, with the capacity to remind all human inhabitants, whenever needed, that Natural Evolution created all the iterations of its advanced sentient species, Homo sapiens, from the same mold.
-p.
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