This investigation reveals a contest between two remarkably different approaches to human aspiration. IKEA furniture represents the democratic ideal—beauty and function accessible to ordinary budgets, available in convenient locations, requiring only patience and an Allen key. It serves immediate, tangible needs: somewhere to sit, somewhere to store, somewhere to begin a domestic life.
The Moon, conversely, represents aspirations that transcend the practical. It offers nothing one can sit upon, yet humanity has spent billions attempting to reach it. It provides no storage solutions, yet contains humanity's greatest adventure. It requires no assembly, yet has prompted our species to assemble rockets, space stations, and international scientific collaborations.
With scores of 44 to 56, the Moon claims victory—not through any failure of IKEA, but through the simple mathematics of cosmic scale. The Moon has governed human consciousness since our ancestors first gazed upward, whilst IKEA has governed human living rooms for merely eighty years.
