We are basically living in a zoo.
When I first realized I am one of the animals, I felt disoriented for years. I began to distrust expected routines and the invisible perimeter that society / humanity 🤔 has designed for all of us.
I started recognizing the handlers, the feeding times and the shelf-wobblers used for distraction. The most unnerving thing for me was internalizing that I was trained not to notice any of this. e.g. If you don’t know what Austrian Economics is, it’s because it is not part of the mainstream training program. (note: look into it).
That was the beginning of my thinking.
Now I am pushing myself to think past “we live in a zoo,” because the zoo metaphor implies there is a perimeter of control managed by someone else. Why accept the fantasy of a competent zookeeper?
What if it’s a jungle?
From zoo to jungle
A zoo is a curated version of reality.
In the zoo‑frame:
We assume someone else’s plan.
We assume the dangerous things are mostly behind glass.
We assume if something goes wrong, “they” will step in.
Now imagine you step off a plane into an actual jungle: The Great Rift Valley. No manicured paths. No fences. No wayfinding: “YOU ARE HERE”, in red warnings.
Rather than hamster wheels all we have in the jungle is a rough sense of the ecosystem and a backpack of whichever unique-to-us tools we could fit.
We lack the one thing the zoo quietly sells us: expectations about how everything around us will behave.
In the jungle‑frame:
We do not expect the animals to be “nice.”
We do not expect the environment to “make sense.”
We do not expect our stories to matter to hippos, zebras and buffalo.
We just want to live, and maybe—if we’re lucky: thrive.
The Jungle Method (in 4 moves)
In the jungle the goal is to apply a logical methodology to reality, in order to survive.
1. Suspend expectations about other people’s behavior
If you’re alone in the jungle with a wild animal you’ve befriended over months, you still know deep down it’s a wild animal. Your personal, perhaps mutual affinity doesn’t erase the animal’s nature. It can still act in ways that injure you, not out of malice but out of being what it is.
Roles in The Jungle
Your employer is a wild animal.
Your government is a wild animal.
Your friends are wild animals.
Your “community” is a wild animal.
11 Rules of The Jungle
Identify a sentient being and assume it is wild.
Ask: what can he/she/it actually do to me, whether or not it loves me?
Adjust how exposed you are to that range of behaviors.
2. Replace moral narratives with “reading the room”
In a zoo, labeling something “good” or “bad” is meaningful and necessary to keep traffic moving along the maze of curated paths and enclosures. Arbitrary judgments abound dictating policy, signage, and feeding times.
In the jungle, “good” or “bad” is irrelevant to whether an animal attacks you. Logical reasoning quickly takes over: Is this thing venomous? rather than “It’s not fair that you use venom to hurt me!”
11 Rules of The Jungle
STOP when you catch yourself thinking “It shouldn’t be like this.”
REFRAME under what conditions, might it change?
IDENTIFY incentives, instead of villains and saints.
3. Keep a healthy distance by default
Walk through the jungle “with skill”, preserving a healthy distance even if you develop mutual affinity with another animal.
Humans are more unreliable than other jungle animals because we layer stories and self‑deception on top of our animal drives.
11 Rules of The Jungle
Require people around you to earn closeness.
Stress-test your animal friends in multiple environments.
Expect people to self-serve under enough pressure.
4. Iterate in reality, not in your head
Go to East Africa or any other place in bountiful nature where everything grows. Let the physical reality of the environment recalibrate you. Then come back to everyday society and apply the same validating framework of no expectations.
11 Rules of The Jungle
Run small non-consensus experiments
Say
Nowhen you are expected to sayYes.Ask for better terms
Keep notes about when I did X then Y happened.
Music: Outside by lobster for lunch
The Jungle Method
(Part II)
coming soon...
