The Tree of Knowledge in the Forest of Lies

There's a tough old fruit tree not far from my door with the year's final apples clinging to its branches. Yesterday I watched the wind blow a few down to thump on the grass. Each thud was like a footstep of advancing winter. It was reality with knobs on - the most profoundly inevitable truth you can imagine : the changing of the season. Exactly as has happened for untold thousands of years, autumn ends and winter begins.

To rub my nose in it, a few squirrels were squabbling among the newly-fallen leaves, getting their nut-stashes organised, like they always do. Acorns and chestnuts were rolling underfoot in the parks. I spent a long time thinking about the implications and reflecting on the year just gone.

The natural world does not lie to us, and does not wish to. The apple tree is the original, symbolic, allegorical embodiment of knowledge. But in contrast to the unstoppable certainties of the changing seasons, the non-natural world has raised around us a dark, dense forest of lies. Nothing could be further from nature than the synthetic news, the output of that inescapable matrix of ____________