The Call of the Wild by Jack London

Domesticated animals, and animals in the zoos, live much longer than their siblings in the wild. If so, why is The Call of the Wild so alluring?

Partly, it is due to our biological instincts. Humans live longer as we become increasingly more domesticated. At the same time, the fertility rates among the most domesticated and the most docile groups have dropped far below the replacement rate. These social groups head toward extinction, rapidly. The Call of the Wild is merely a call for survival.

During the so called pandemics, the authorities further extend their authoritarian rule. We are being locked down and locked up, becoming further domesticated. We got forcibly vaccinated, rendering further sterilized. The Call of the Wild is the siren call of our desperation.

People flock to parks, the places resembling wildness for domesticated animals. Before the pandemic, parking lots in parks are mostly empty. Shortly after the pandemic, cars filled the parking lot quickly, many overflowing to the roadside. Once again, people attempt to immerse ourselves into the wildness, at least into the domesticated wildness.

The Call of the Wild awakens the wildness buried deep in our heart. People start to protest, protesting against the mandatory vaccination, the mandatory masking, the mandatory quarantine. The mainstream medium, as usual, ignore all the protests. In the end, truck drivers have to park their trucks in downtown Ottawa to make a statement. We may be a fringe minority. We may have unacceptable ideas. But we follow The Call of the Wild.

In The Call of the Wild, Buck, a dog born and raised in the civilized world, heard the call in the wild Yukon. He eventually returned to the wildness as a wolf, an undomesticated dog. When he re-emerged from the wild forest, he found it so easy to sink his teeth into the throat of humans, his former masters. It is in the wildness he regains his courage, his confidence and his freedom.

P.S. When I first read The Call of the Wild many years ago, I wouldn’t imagine I would live most of my working life in northern Canada, the wildness depicted by Jack London.