A Wildly Late Post

The word wild has many connotations, several definitions, and even more personal interpretations. Its synonyms include raucous, chaotic, whimsical, and even irksome. But the mechanics of the word itself belie something deeper. ‘Wild’ itself is not particularly profound as a word. It is four letters long, three consonants, one vowel. It is the range of different meanings it can have that makes it intriguing, gives it depth, and makes it worth thinking about. Take a look at the following sentences:
“Don’t go near that son! It is a wild animal!”
“Dude, that was a wild party on Saturday!”
“A man could become lost, and lose himself, in that vast expanse we call the wild…”
From these examples we can infer that at different times wild can be used as a word denoting an atmosphere, can itself suggest a setting, and can be used to describe an animal we certainly wouldn’t want to be chummy with. To me though, considering the word wild in a classic sense, it takes on a meaning both in agreement with, and at odds with the dictionary. Though it has many definitions, wild is most often used as an adjective to describe something done in a manner that goes against the grain (No, that wasn’t a dictionary definition). That presents all of those wild animals and place with a problem. Quite simply, they don’t exist. Confused?
To go against the grain, or perform any other willful act separating oneself from society, you need to be capable of thinking freely, and more importantly you need a society where thinking freely and existing aren’t mutually exclusive. Unless animals and plants have been laboring in secret for the last thousand, thousand years to create complex societies that they could break away from, their society is nature. In nature anything that doesn’t follow nature’s rules…dies. So if animals and plants cannot be wild in that sense, what can? Well, we are in luck, for one species has created a complex society where being wild, and existing can coexist in only slight disharmony. And they are the wildest of all… (ok that is just a restatement of the glaringly obvious, but for dramatic effect it had to be done.)
I refer of course to the crab people buried deep under the earth’s crust, waiting to rise up and destroy me, but since I couldn’t find any living specimens of them to prove the reality of our never ending battle, I’ll just have to settle for humanity. Setting the quip aside to be returned to at a later date, Humanity is the only actual species on the planet that can be wild. And wild they are. Take any internalized concept/definition of what wild is, and you’ll find a prime suspect among humanity. Unless your concept of wild involves animals and trees…but I won’t begrudge you your fictionalized concepts.