First I have to say that your original post was very thorough and... poetic in a sense. I feel that the moon landing portrayed everything that human beings are capable of, in essence the ability to work together for a greater good beyond the immediate future. It was not that we were first there as a nation, but that we were there at all as a species. If more of the world would look at ourselves as one unit designed to exist as a whole this world would be a much different place. From the standpoint of a US citizen one could take out of it that the US of A has the ability and drive to reach the moon but it is more than that. We can go wherever we want to and follow whatever dream may float our way.
If you had asked me one hundred years ago about the existence of computer, cars, jets, rockets, nukes and all that other stuff that has come out of curiosity, hatred, and dreams, I would have told you that it was impossible.

We can be who we want to. What is your dream? Who do you want to be in five years? CEO? Ditch digger? Mc fry chef? Fighter pilot? The great, the good, the humble, we can be where we want to. All we need......Is a lot of hard work and a little good luck. (End of rant)

P.S. Read and agree with the next two comments. We are a disappointment to ourselves and what we could be.

Lines dividing nationalities will NEVER be erased. It is not within human capability to do so as our societal structures currently stand. Prides and prejudices, propogated through culture and religion (and yes, I distinctly separate the two in this instance), fuel our egotistical need for superiority, even over our fellow brethren. I truly believe these sentiments will not and can not be eliminated until a sentient alien threat forces us to band together; and even then the bonds will be tenuous at best. It will take millenia of colonizing and exploration before national heritage lines will be erased --- and even so only to be replaced by a similar idea on a much grander scale.

I use this idea as a prelude to my argument that, yes, while the lunar landing "showed how extensive human ingenuity is," it was also marred on every side by the Catch-22 of said ingenuity. As the sole survivor at the top of the food chain, the only thing on the planet capable of hampering our achievements are our own damn selves; we continuously get in our own way! When we are incapable of stopping ourselves physically, through arguments and altercations, battles and wars, domination and isolation, we literally *invent* roadblocks. Multiple religions (of which only one is right, so the other 30 are false), ideologies, totalitarian governments -- all tools used to attack the mind when the body can no longer sustain the damage.

However, marred though the American landing may be, tinged, dripping with nationalistic pride, serving as a constant to reminder of the weaklings around us of our superiority, it does, as Lead mentions, represent human triumph, though I would choose to coin it as transcendence. We certainly, as a people, and to a loose extent, as a single people of a single world, were able to witness, in awe and admiration, the spectacle of the event, forgetting for one slight moment the troubles around us, all those mentioned previously by Lead, the civil war and the social injustices and the famine and disease that had cropped up all at the same time.

I have a generally pessimistic outlook; I find it leads to very few disappointments. I would like to be proven wrong on my summary of human inability to progress beyond barbaric tendencies to value power of strength over power of love. I would like to be proven wrong while I'm still alive. But how many of us truly believe that such boundaries can be truly exterminated until a greater force pushes us to do so? How many of us truly believe a marriage of the scientific communities of the world, as they scout the neighboring planets and stars, as they learn to terraform and excavate and colonize, how many of us truly believe the joining together of the top 1% of the minds of our species can cement that bond to the other 99%? The two groups have rarely shared similar sentiments, the latter often ignoring the former as incomprehensible and irrational to real world events.

Thank you for sparking this topic Lead.