Adam Curtis’s documentary ‘Bitter Lake’ (BBC iPlayer) charts recent Middle East history. It’s 2 hours+ so here’s a synopsis. After the WW2 America wanted oil and the backward fledgling state of Saudi Arabia wanted to protect their brutal Wasabi fundamentalist version of Islam. Roosevelt and the Saudi ruler cut a deal on Bitter Lake, oil for protection and petro technology. The US supplied plant and the latest armaments. Earlier in Afghanistan they built dams to help modernise the country. Afghan groups revolted against ‘western influence’ and turned to Marxism. The Russians armed the revolt but their attempts to introduce Communism failed and left the Afghans to fight amongst themselves. In Saudi the ruler didn’t like America’s support for Israel in their war with Egypt and hiked the price of oil five fold which led to an economic crisis in western economies in the 70’s. They then flooded the west with their ‘petro dollar’ profits that gave far greater destabilising power to the banking system. Iran and Iraq fought over their Islamic differences and when Saddam Hussein invaded Saudi Arabia the Saudis were incapable of using the US armaments so America went in to overthrow him and protect their oil ally. Osama Bin Laden, a member of a wealthy Saudi oil family, rebelled against them believing the west was damaging Wasabi Islamic beliefs and began attacking the west directly with Al Quida. Meanwhile in Afghanistan the American built dams had raised the water table creating perfect conditions for poppy growing which the warring factions used for income by exporting cocaine to the west. Every attempt to democratise Iraq and Afghanistan was unsuccessful. As Sonny and Shia wars percolated through many Middle East countries Wasabi Moslems in Saudi Arabia saw an opportunity to expand there brand of Islam. Wasabi Muslims see both Sonny and Shia Muslims as infidels no better than Christians and Jews and as Saudi law requires all their people to give a percentage of their income to ‘good causes’ they funded Wasabi fighters in neighbouring countries. Their fight to form a fundamentalist (Wasabi) Islamic state became ISIS, funded by Saudi’s who are in turn protected by America. The documentary devotes a whole minute of an American soldier stroking a bird, which moves from his gun to his finger, a beautiful moment of connection, human and animal, one with another. It seems to me the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge is not referring to our knowledge of physics and technology etc but what we ‘know’ as beliefs, beliefs that separate Jews from Christians, Sonnies from Shia. Beliefs that we fight for, condemn for and brutalise each other for. In that moment the soldier did no know that ‘knowledge’, he was being as the bird was being. This is our path back to unknowing, to refusing the fruit.