I took this photo from Portugal on 3 April 2020, four days before the largest supermoon of 2020. The world was under COVID lockdown. I believe this is the moon at the most observed moment of its history. Never before were so many humans alive, around 7.8 billion. Never before were so many confined at the same time, more than half of the world stayed home that spring. The skies were clearer than in decades, with less traffic and industry. Telescope sales spiked that year. Millions of windows, one object above all of them.
The moon always shows the same face to Earth. It is tidally locked, so the view in this photo is the exact view seen by every human who ever lived. Twelve humans walked on it between 1969 and 1972. Some people still doubt it, but the laser mirrors they left behind answer every night. Third parties like India's Chandrayaan-2 and NASA's LRO have photographed the landing sites, flags and rover tracks from orbit. The moon moves away from Earth 3.8 cm per year, measured with those same mirrors. It stabilizes Earth's tilt, without it our seasons would be chaotic, it made stable climate, and life as we know it, possible. A day on the moon lasts about a month in Earth time. Its gravity moves the oceans, that is physics. Its influence on how we are born, how we think, how we behave, has been studied many times and never proven. What is true is true, what is belief is belief. It reflects only about 12% of the sunlight that reaches it, similar to worn asphalt, and it has been the most important light of our nights since the beginning of times, by borrowing. That night, it was simply the same point of view for many.
One point of view, common to all races, ages, cultures, religions and countries.