Behold: A Cardinal
This month’s Behold a Wood Stork is the second in a series, the first being Behold a Cardinal. For all the word suggests, ‘behold’ conveys the focus of the series. What does it mean to behold something.
The images are of wildlife looking at us, we at them, eye to eye. What of that meeting, eye to eye, the series asks.
More than the cardinal in last month’s photo, the Wood Stork commands the frame front and centre. Where else in the image is there to look but eye to eye. While the cardinal rested heavily in the lower right corner of the image, the wood stork pops up into the centre of the white canvas, a bit like a jack-in-the-box, unexpected, a bit rough, a bit wild. ‘Surprise!,’ says the stork, bursting in from nowhere, looking a bit surprised itself.
As I found with the cardinal image, the eye of the stork in this image is riveting. Doesn’t want to let me go. Behold the stork. Don’t think to look away shouts the Wood Stork. See me. I am your ancient of days. Don’t think to turn away. I am here to save you. Behold … me.
We must give the Wood Stork its due. The existence of the stork and the bird kingdom stretch back to the dinosaurs. Where the great dinosaurs didn’t survive, the birds did. Evidence of this comes to us from 150 million years ago though scientists say the origin would have been much further back. Millions of years before. In contrast, Homo Sapiens have been around less than a million years, some say only half a million years.
Does that make birds wiser than humans? They have seen much more. Survived much more. Oh no. Not possible. We could never say wiser than us. Not at all. The wood storks have nothing to tell us. Nothing to pass on. Nothing of value learned from their much longer evolutionary journey and their survival through hundreds of millennia.
‘Look me in the eye’ says the Wood Stork. ‘What do you see?’
It’s been a mystery to humans how birds migrate, how they find their way across continents. In fact, birds are known to fly to their destination in New Zealand and each year return to the same branch each year.
Scientists have known that birds have remarkable hearing in the lower registers, and it is believed while flying down the centre of the North American continent, birds can hear at the same time both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
That isn’t enough though to account for their remarkable navigation. Only since the early 2000s has new research suggested how birds find their way. In fact, some experts speculate the birds can see their destination from their point of departure. It’s a kind of seeing we can’t see.
I know. It sounds preposterous. The scientists are only at the beginning of the research. They have discovered that birds have in the back of their eye over twice as many cones as do humans. A typical human with three cones in the back of the eye sees millions of colours. Some few people, more women than men, have four cones, and these special few with one cone more see multiple shades for each shade the typical human eye sees. A wood stork has 3 or 4 more cones than humans; how many billions of colours more does the wood stork see? We can’t even imagine all the colours they see.
It’s more complex than just colours. Biologist and physicist researchers believe birds can see the earth’s magnetic field. Researchers looking at the molecular level of activity in the birds’ eyes see electrons split off, the various activity of the split off pairs of electrons creating various chemicals communicating with the brain on the level of quantum physics giving the birds a sight of which we can have no idea.
The birds’ eyes are playing out in the world of quantum mechanics, able to see and navigate the earth in ways we can’t begin to imagine. Some scientists infer the birds can see their destination before they leave on their migration. Seeing what we can’t see. Knowing the world in ways we can’t know. The sky that the bird sees is nothing like the sky we see. The earth the bird knows is nothing like the earth we know. The bird sees and knows so much more about the inner workings of nature.
Of course, this is a simpler telling which I have summarized from a basic telling on a Radio Lab show, remarkable as it is, the actual scientific literature, no doubt, more remarkable. I’ve put a link below to the show. 1.
The point I’m suggesting we consider is how little we know about the way the world works.
We might pause then, might question, might imagine that maybe there is a lot about the earth, about life, that we have no idea about. Maybe we know less about the way of the world than the wildlife, the coursing rivers, the thunder and lightning, the glaciers and deserts, the ocean deep and the mountain ranges, for even stones are alive, and like the stork’s vision seeing quantum fields, we might be very ignorant knowing of the consciousness of stones and rain and sun. Considering all we don’t know, and about all we have been mistaken thinking we knew, perhaps we shouldn’t assume we alone are conscious.
Scientists describe the bit of the world of which we are conscious as our material matter floating in a sea of dark matter. 2. It is dark because its energy or force doesn’t travel on photons which is what carries electromagnetic energy to our eyes, allowing our brain to see. There are other models, parallel tunnels for example, but what the scientists will say is that dark atoms and dark forces exist, make up so much of what we call life, but are unseen by us.
How much do we, new to the planet, know about its actual life? The birds see much deeper into the forces of energy than we do.
Maybe a human flaw, a naiveite we indulge, is our confidence in our particular consciousness, us thinking how smart we are, how we know better than the rest of life on the planet about how things are.
Let us recall, if the natural world were to disappear, humans would be unable to exist, would become extinct. If humans were to disappear, the natural world would still flourish. In less than a hundred years there would be no visible sign of human existence, even the tallest of our towers would be gone while nature would thrive. Nature is older, and we might be forced to conclude, is wiser.
We have forgotten that we are nature, a part of something else, deeper and more complex than we can imagine, subject to an order we know little about. In our human hubris, we forget how sacred is the harmony of all things to which we are subject, things we have no inkling about, all about us, great forces and energies, existing infinitely larger and infinitesimally smaller, way beyond the smallness we can see, existing in quantum fields, dark magnetism… well, we know very little about it all; what little we know tells us how its order and interdependence is way beyond our comprehension, completely unknown to us. And yet we humans separate ourselves out, to be superior, dominant, above nature, nature’s role to succumb to our whims. In our view of the world, we can do whatever we like; it is all for our taking.
Locked eye to eye with the Wood Stork, the Wood Stork might ask ‘how smart do you think you are? You have known for decades that spewing so many hydrocarbons into the atmosphere results in a breakdown of the stability of the ecosystem and atmosphere. Your seasons for growing and harvesting your food depend on a predictable atmosphere, season to season, to feed yourselves. You have undermined that with your overuse of fossil fuels, damaged the delicate balance you need to flourish. You’ve known this for a long time, but every year you dump more hydrocarbons into the atmosphere than the year before, including this past year. How smart is that? Poisoning the air that you then breathe. Creating an atmosphere more unpredictable and wilder with each year. Fires raging at temperatures never before seen.’
I met a man last week whose hometown in California was vaporized by the fires just a few months ago.
‘Even in this neighbourhood,’ continues the Wood Stork, ‘you are driving your cars whenever you like, wherever you like, for whatever little reason comes to your mind, with no thought to the consequences. How smart is that?,’ repeats the Wood Stork, in case we didn’t understand the question the first time – asking us, who claim to be so smart; who don’t even have the capacity to see what the Wood Stork sees; who don’t even know how the Wood Stork sees. What does the Wood Stork see when it sees us, with its sight far more sophisticated than ours; what does it see?
In our arrogance we have not heeded the integration and balance of nature, how dependent we are on nature’s order for our survival. In our arrogance, we have ignored our prophets telling us to stop our rampage through nature, rampaging as if we were gods: doing as we like, how we like. The Guardian news surveyed all the contributing climate scientists to the United Nations’ COP over the past decades. A large number returned the surveys. The world’s leading climate scientists all reported feeling despondent, many depressed. All their research and warnings for decades have been ignored. Many were giving up on their research. Some were pursuing advocacy as their last hope to get us to pay attention.3.
‘We shall survive,’ says the Wood Stork, ‘we the fowl of the air. The ancient of days. The ones looking you in the eye, you who claim superiority on this planet, you who live like you own this planet, you who unlikely will live as long as the dinosaurs, dinosaurs who lived in harmony with the earth for over 150 million years. As it looks now, you won’t make even one million years,’ sympathises the Wood Stork.
‘You could come to us for your wisdom,’ says the Wood Stork. ‘You could put away your phone, spend a day or two without your phone, listen to the sounds about you, feel the air on your skin, say little, say nothing, take in the quiet, hear the beat of your own heart, your heart beating in your chest. You could notice the bark on the tree as you walk by, see how it comes alive in the early morning sun; hear the sound of birdsong in the air; breathe, breathe the air; feel your breath in you, life. You could watch the course of the sun pass from east to west, dusk, darkness to come, leave off the lights, let the darkness fold around you, dream your dreams. Awaken to the new day, the sun returning, life again, another day to live life. Feeling so grateful having life to live. Such a delicate, beautiful thing is felt life, delicate, like a feather on the breeze, delicate, exquisite, should you see it, take the time to notice, how it is so exquisite, so much more than the screen, so much more.’
What if we left our screen at home when we take our child for a stroll? Or when we take our dog for a walk? Instead of constantly checking the screen, we would see our child, our pet, see how they are; feel the air around us as we walk. It might be hard to do this. Without the phone we might feel agitated – that anxiety only telling us how addicted we have become, how far we have gone from being able to feel the sacredness of life.
A critique of our western culture, one that psychologist C.G. Jung4. spoke of, is that building our culture on Plato and Aristotle we favoured the rational, dispensed with the magic and mystery held prior, and made the rational the defining approach for governing our conduct in the world. In fact, the presocratic literature – what came before Plato and Aristotle, literature which was destroyed – was literature that honoured the sacredness of mystery; literature which stood in awe of the darkness, the unknown; literature that honoured the unknown source of all life. Such changed with our Western culture, as Jung argued.4. He felt we fostered our rational capacity, our drive to dominate, and with that, our belief we could subdue the world to our grand designs. There is no mystery we arrogant westerners believe, no mystery that the human mind can’t discern and supplant. Nothing in the way of our dominance that our superior intelligence can’t assume.
Carl Jung 4. describes the Western culture as driven by the heroic ideal. One can do whatever one wants if one but puts one’s mind and effort to it. No limits. Go for it. And we have.
What remarkable machines we have built. Great dams, massive ocean-going vessels, space craft, colossal towers, expansive cities, exceptional war machines, factories and warehouses, digital networks, untold products of convenience and adornment, unprecedented global trade, an incredibly rich elite, invasive and highly effective acquisition of resources throughout the planet. In the end, the west is a powerful machine -Jung describing it as a ruthless machine – 20% of the world’s population using 80% of the world’s resources to feed its great machine.
Even the underlying values of the west reflect this dominant pursuit of the individual heroic self: heroic machine-like pursuit of the higher self, of self-discovery and of self-improvement. All our salons and spas, beaches and cruise ships, mixed in with our fantasy of the good life, the splendour and glamour, the height of our dreams, what our dreams are made of: to live like the gods. All this life and the existence of the order of all things have been assumed to be about us; we our great dominant, authentic selves, our superior intelligence overriding all other intelligence; living like gods walking the earth.
Of course, much good can be said about Western culture, its education and health, art, social movements and political economies, but it seems fair to say, generally, that where it neglected the dark order, assumed its own way in the world as an indomitable god-machine, caring only for itself, there was madness in a 300-year war and great wars and genocides; and colonial atrocity, all in the name of power and glory, flag flying in victory on the ramparts; great institutions of power and prestige, the East India Company with a standing army larger than the British crown’s army; heads of state adorned in regalia -gold, silver, diamonds, silks and furs, like gods; popes and kings and queens calling themselves god’s representative on earth, though they acted more like a god themselves.
It’s surprising how old people still in power persist in their hubris, their quests for power and glory for themselves. Some in bigger arenas than others. Some who as old men lead nations, are the head of industry and military, holding forth before the crowds, drinking in their adoration. These old people will soon die of old age, but don’t seem to realize it. One of them, an old man, is determined to receive a third term in office, as if he was going to live forever. It’s curious how that old man indulges in power games with people’s lives causing great harm and suffering simply because he can; because he loves being vindictive, the attention from it being a drug.
It’s peculiar how that old man thinks this is worth his time spent in his remaining days, not realizing it’s all a delusion, won’t last, means nothing, is but the fabrication of self-importance. It’s odd, too, that the old man turns every opportunity into producing wealth for himself, spending all his precious last days obsessing over his wealth and possessions, failing to see, foolishly, that he will have none of it very soon, not a thing he can do about it when his last breath is taken. How fleeting are these; how foolish the bombast seems in the end, in a brief time from now, when all that will remain is his cold corpse. No executive order will save him. He is but one of us.
This delusional thinking, fantasies about immortality, are what Jung4. calls laws made by humans, assumptions about a life that doesn’t exist. We are not gods. Ruthlessness, according to Jung, is what cuts us off from our origins, our truth, stands in the way of our truth about life, this short life. There are other laws he says than the laws humans make; these are the laws that make humans: laws of the darkness, laws inherent in the particles and energies that make us up, the laws that make us human. To defy those laws is to turn the universe inside out.
Shakespeare’s Lear is a telling of the exile of the soul of England due to the acting out of human vanity – exercise of power and might and wisdom – as if one were a god. The consequence of playing god, as Lear experienced, is madness, subjection to a perverse cruelty of the darkness, a twisting in our brain of our sense of reality. Lear out on the heath went mad, madness all around him, the whole kingdom gone mad. Defiance of the gods, whose laws make humans turns into a twisting of the primordial energies and darkness, turned against us, that when neglected twists itself into a perverse cruelty. There is no justice; the dark gods seem indifferent: even the innocent suffer. Cordelia, standing for all that is pure, beautiful and noble in the world, dies along with Lear.
They are jealous gods, gods we know nothing about, the darkness to us, the deep darkness behind this wisp of energy we call life. In the order of things, the gods, the dark energies, the unconscious, whatever you wish to term mystery, in the order of things demands not to be neglected. We are to care for the gods, the darkness that governs the swirling energies behind all things. It is not that we ask the gods to care for us, what Western culture has given us, but rather as in the presocratic literature and ritual, that we attend to the gods, to the mystery, and that service, that acknowledgement, is our place in the order of things.
When we stop listening to the wood storks, the coursing rivers, the interstellar constellations, the bullfrogs in our ponds, the bark on the tree, then we stop listening to the gods. The consequence is a twisting of the order of being human; our offence against the way things are designed to be becomes distortion and collapse: our madness, Lear’s madness, absolute madness. Are things not mad now?
Jung4. says our ruthlessness cuts us off from our ancestors, and when cut off from our ancestors, we are cut off from ourselves, from our deep and hidden knowledge of who we are, from our place in the order and harmony of things.
Our ancestors know about life, better than us. It’s in their stories, stories passed down to us, generation to generation, but we dismiss our ancestors as superstitious, as feebleminded, as ignorant, because now, with our science and technology, we know much better.
For thousands of years have our ancestors gazed at the stars and wondered, have asked what this life is about. Archaeology is riddled with the evidence of ancestor after ancestor’s history turning into chaos and lost attempts, failed attempts at human glory.
The ancestors tried supplanting the dark powers that are the deep order of things. They too have constructed great kingdoms and empires on earth; championed death and chaos for others to promote their own profit; conquered the lands of other human peoples; slaughtered hundreds of thousands in their notions of being right bearers of revealed truth; oppressed and enslaved other human beings for selfish gain. In the past, the British Empire oversaw the death and indentured enslavement of African people just to take their rubber. Today we do the same to take their cobalt at the cost of their lives, to keep the cost down on our smartphones.
The ancestors have told us that we are not greater than the darkness of which we come. The darkness – that mystery which we cannot know – is the way things are, how things are. We have no idea really of how things are. Our latest scientific study of the cosmos tells us we didn’t know enough, our theories quite inadequate. Quantum mechanics has turned our cosmology inside out. We are in the dark really. We don’t even really know how birds migrate to the same branch every year. In fact, we can’t know for our sight is far less than the bird’s.
The recurring story through aeons of human history, written in the sands of our archaeology, is how we make ourselves out to be gods, and how the gods don’t like that.
We defy the primordial order behind all things when give it no heed, set ourselves up as all-wise, all-powerful, all-knowing. We don’t listen to the Wood Stork that tells us there is more than we can know. We ignore the ancestors and prophets that beseech us to not neglect the darkness that exists behind all things, to take care of the darkness, respect it, honour it, bow before it, turn to it to learn our wisdom.
It is the sacredness of life that we in our Faustian desire to rule the world forget. We forget that life is sacred. We have abandoned our elders and ancestors pleading with us through their stories, to learn from them.
This is another way to see things. It is to see through the eyes of the Wood Stork, see all things as something other than ourselves, something so beyond us, billions of galaxies, and infinitely microscopic energies and forces we have no idea of, dark space and time, if space and time even exists in darkness, so little do we know in our assumption of knowing it all. The Wood Stork, simple as it is, sees in its eye so much more than we are able to see.
Behold the Wood Stork.
So we come to the end, the last paragraph, but the end is also a beginning, miles and miles to go before we sleep.
“In the first sentence of his biography, Carl Jung says ‘my life is the story of the self-realization of the unconscious.’ It is not the self-realization of his ego. The ego is not on the greater journey. The journey for Jung is a recognition of the darkness, the unknown, a mystery, that is the source of all that we call life.”4. It’s another way to see our place in the world. Is it a way for all of us or only some? An interesting question. Is it a way for me?, we might ask. An even more interesting question, to ponder.
- McEwan, Annie (producer). Quantum Birds. Radio Lab. Feb. 14, 2025. https://radiolab.org/podcast/quantum-birds
2. Zurek, Kathyrn. The Dark Sector: The hidden world. Scientific American. April, 2025. (Vol. 332, No.4)
3. Carrington, Damian. We Live in an Age of Fools: Why hundreds of the world’s top climate scientists are in despair about the future. The Guardian. May 17, 2024. (Vol. 210, No. 20.)
4. Harvey, Fiona. Scientists deliver ‘final warning’ on climate crisis: act now or it’s too late. The Guardian. {this article is over two years old} https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/20/ipcc-climate-crisis-report-delivers-final-warning-on-15c
Also in the current online Guardian:
- Noaa [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] fires hundreds of climate workers after court clears way for dismissals.
- Trump administration cuts $4 million to Princeton’s climate research funding.
- White House ends funding for key US climate body: ‘No coming back from this.’
- Trump signs orders to allow coal-fired power plants to remain open.
- Trump takes aim at city and state climate laws in Executive Order.
- Revealed: Big Tech’s new datacentres will take water from the earth’s driest areas.
- Trump officials quietly move to remove bans on ‘forever chemicals.’
- New House Republican proposal seeks to exempt many toxic Pfas from review.
- Severe storms and tornadoes hit US south and Midwest, killing seven.
- ‘Potentially historic’ flooding threat looms after almost 100 tornadoes hit the US.
- US prepares for deadly floods with many National Weather Service Offices understaffed.
4. Peter Kingsley. Catafalque: Carl Jung and the end of humanity. 2018.