The Moon

Today I decided to pass by our very own Moon after reading an article titled
"India's lunar mission finds evidence of water on the Moon"
Click here to see the article

It's an immaculate article as far as the format, and the language is concerned. Besides that, this discovery is an exciting one, and could have a lot of impact on the coming future.
I am also quite surprised that NASA failed to find traces of water on moon after all their efforts, and ISRO found evidence with their very first lunar mission. It looks like to me that somebody has been keeping secrets.
All that aside, the part of the article that I think needs to be talked about is and I quote -
"The discovery is a significant boost for India in its space race against China."
Another excerpt from the same article
"They will also provide a significant boost for India as it tries to catch up with China in what many see as a 21st-century space race."

Now this is where I think we are losing our ground as a species.

Let's start with the main motive behind the various lunar programs owned by various different countries.
The factor that gave birth to the space expedition programs was our need as a species to understand the universe better. To find out if there is life on other planets as well, so that we can evolve our understanding of nature and universe as a species.
But somewhere along the line we lost track of our priorities and are now fighting with one another over who discovers life first. Isn't something wrong here? Shouldn't we think about this for a while?
Shouldn't it be about celebrating as a species that we found water on the moon? Shouldn't the media and the governments be talking about -What this discovery by our fellow country means for us humans? Shouldn't all the countries be working together on exploring the space?

Wouldn't it be more efficient and peaceful if we worked together on the questions that face mankind?

But nobody seems to notice. Instead people take pride in these kind of events, somehow everybody wants to feel superior to everybody else. I am sure there will be a lot of people out there today talking about how proud they are to be indian. Even the news channels will be asking people how they feel about India being the first country to discover water on moon.
Every channel is out there sending out the wrong message and they have no clue they are doing so. Their motto is - "anything that sells".

And then we blame the media. Media is merely out there showing you what you want to see. Anything that gives them higher ratings. Of course the main stream media is politically fueled and controlled, but if we don't buy into their gimmicks who would the media cater to?

We need to self educate our-selves and be critical thinkers. Not just accepting the point of views thrown at us by other people and the society, but rather we should all have our own point of views. No matter how absurd they may be.

I see discovery of water on the moon as global triumph of humanity, and I am not one bit proud that India discovered it.