The Crabs and the Bucket

2007.10.30   prev     next

What happens if you’re out crab fishing, and you put several of the crabs you catch in an open bucket? Any one crab can theoretically climb out of the bucket, but that won’t happen. Every time a crab tries, the other crabs, intensely competitive, will grab the escaping crab and pull it back down into the bottom of the bucket. No crab, it would seem, can stand to see another crab excel, so they thus keep each other trapped in the wide-open bucket, and they all wind up getting cooked.

If only the crabs would rejoice in the successful ventures of other crabs, instead of trying to drag each other down — then you would, of course, bring a container with a fastenable lid to your fishing trip, and the crabs would be trapped anyway. And they would still get cooked.

Moral of the story: When you’re screwed, you’re screwed. Adopting a “better attitude” about it isn’t going to help.