CRAB Theory

Coming from an Indian heritage family, I used to hear my mum mention about the Indian Crab Story being spoken of so vividly and often. In a nutshell the story goes like this...


A fisherman in India caught a few crabs and placed them in a bucket and as he was about to close it, his mate says why do you need to close it?. The fisherman says well I don't want any of them to escape. His mate then goes "Don't worry about it, just leave the bucket open as none of them will escape cos when one tries to escape another crab would pull him down".


This story apparently applies to a lot of cultures around the world. I found out that its also called 'The Italian Crab Theory' or also the 'Crab Mentality' which is essentially 'If I'm not getting it, neither can you'. Wikipedia defines this as 'ensuring the collective demise of the group'. The key idea here is Jealousy/Envy which is one of the 7 deadliest sins as written in the bible.


The analogy of this to human beings is that a group will attempt to negate or diminish the importance of a member who stands out or achieve success out of envy, jealousy, conspiracy or competitive feeling. This is associated with a narrow-minded thinking which is non-constructive and self destructing in nature.


How about constructive thinking to overcome this feeling ? How about emulate the success of the person you're jealous of and in time also achieve success. Then once, you're there, do the same to others? Why not look at the bigger picture and learn to work with each other for mutual greater success? The saying is that success does rub off the shoulders of the successful, so instead of being jealous/envious why not learn from the successful and change the world you're in by helping others around you. There are loads of people out there who are less fortunate and suffering and could use a hand...

In the time being....Chilli Crab sounds tempting lahhh !!! :-)