The idiom “It’s a jungle out there” describes a dangerous world where everyone is out for themselves. It draws on the tradition of portraying nature as menacing and chaotic, and is part of a larger group of idioms that contrast civilization with the wild. The term has two common usages, one as a warning to fend for oneself and the other to justify ruthless behavior.
“It’s a jungle out there” is an English idiom that describes a dangerous and threatening situation. It often has the broader implication that the entire world is the proverbial “jungle,” a dangerous environment filled with danger where all parties are out for themselves alone. This expression draws on a long tradition in English idiom and literature of portraying the natural world, and jungles in particular, as menacing and chaotic. The term is primarily American, although it also occurs in British English.
The expression is one of several English idioms in which the jungle represents an uncivilized environment, a menacing natural world as opposed to the safety of the cultural world. “The Law of the Jungle” describes the basic laws of human interaction and is often used to describe brutal and unjust laws whereby the strong exploit the weak, although ironically this is inconsistent with the original usage of the term in Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book.” The term “jungle drums” refers to the informal methods of communication through which information often travels. “The concrete jungle” refers to cities, suggesting that cities are, in their own way, as dangerous and full of predators as wilderness.
All of these idioms, including “it’s a jungle out there,” draw on a conception of the difference between nature and civilization deeply rooted in Western thought. For example, Thomas Hobbes, a 17th century philosopher, described man’s life in a state of nature as “lonely, poor, mean, brutish and short.” Animal behavior served as an analogy for human behavior to writers such as Shakespeare, who wrote that fish live in the sea “as men do on land; the big ones devour the little ones”. Images of wild areas such as the jungle are therefore used to suggest dangerous environments where predators thrive and the weak must fend for themselves.
“It’s a jungle out there” has two slightly different common usages. The former is like a warning and usually includes the suggestion that the individual should fend for himself. In the second usage, the expression is used to justify ruthless and competitive behavior on the part of the speaker. “I had to think about my interests first,” a speaker might argue, “it’s a jungle out there.” In this sense, the expression has the same meaning as the common saying “every man for himself”.
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