you are a crab and you are in a bucket

The form this bucket takes is irrelevant, and your status as a crab is inarguable. I'm sorry to break it to you this way. Maybe you didn't want to be a crab, but you had no choice in the matter. Maybe you didn't want to be in a bucket, but you had no choice in the matter.

Unfortunately, if you are a crab in a bucket, there isn't a lot to do. There are a lot of crabs around you. kinda uncomfy...

There's the hard wall of the bucket. There's a hole up there with a sky above. That's about it. Well....can't just sit here all day, time to do something. Go ahead, reach out, grasp something, make something happen.

All you can find is another crab, but you pull yourself up regardless. Success. Closer to the sky above. Again you reach and again you pull, finding yourself closer and closer to freedom. You ARE you closer to freedom, aren't you? On second look, it doesn't really seem like it. The sky seems just as far away as it was moments ago.

Of course, you think, it's obvious now. As you pulled yourself up on another crab, you pulled them down. Other crabs are doing the same to you.

This is crab mentality. In short, if you observe crabs in a bucket, you'll find that its very difficult for them to escape, because they pull each other down. This is very analogous to human behavior because we also do mean things to one another...or something like that?

But I don't really subscribe to that fully. Some people talk about crabs in a bucket as it applies to humans as an intentional behavior. We just keep each other down, because we're collectively evil. Of course, this is total fucking nonsense. Others look at crabs in a bucket and say "we just can't help it, we're just like this and we're evil." But again, this interpretation misses the mark in my mind.

you are a crab in a bucket and you are not evil. you are doing what you can. you are acting in good faith. you're a crab in a bucket, and there is not that much to do.
We pull each other down not because we are inherently evil, but because that is the nature of being stuck in a bucket with a bunch of other crabs

so, you are a crab and you're stuck in a bucket with a torrent of other crabs, and your situation does not lend itself to getting out of the bucket very easily or quickly. Do we all need to work together to create a new crab paradigm? Do we have to remove the evil traits from our crab society to move forward? How, oh how, can we escape? Or must we accept the learned helplessness of being stuck in a bucket forever and give up?

I don't know. For, unfortunately, I am also a crab stuck in a bucket with all of you. Maybe there is a way that we can escape our fate someday. For now, it's just us and the bucket. You will find yourself closer to the top as you pull people down. You will be pulled back from such heights once again. The cycle will repeat, and this bucket you will, for the moment, not escape.

When you look at it this way, it becomes obvious that the crabs aren't the problem, the bucket is.

you may be powerless to stop it for now.

That said, small crustacean, Another World Is Possible. One where we are not constrained by the bucket. I will fight for that world.... against this bucket... in whatever ways I can. I expect I will need to fight my way to the top, and I expect I will be dragged down as I go.

you are a crab and you are in a bucket.

fighting will be inevitable. you have little choice. to be a crab in a bucket is to live in this ever-perpetuating rhythm.
make sure you're fighting for the right thing.