Whispers of defeat and crab pots. The story of the crab pot goes like this. A bunch of captured crabs are in a bucket and as one crab has made it to the rim of the bucket, about to escape it gets pulled back down by the other crabs. The truth is that this is a function of the crabs trying to escape. They’re looking for something to hang on to, to pull themselves up and away and out.
Subsequently, through the act, another crab has pulled them down. We look at this and say, “Ah, look at all those crabs trying to pull the other crab back down into the bucket to live with them.”
You Are Not a Crab
I doubt one single crab looks at it that way. But it’s a wonderful story. The story has a great visual that you’re trapped like the crabs and you need to remain with the rest of the crabs. “Get back down here with the rest of us who do you think you are?” The illumination of the story is a message of the group always pulling, those try to better themselves, back down into the group. The act helps in justify the group position in life work or relationships. That is overtly clear in the story, and physically demonstrated.
What about the people who have given up they want you with them as well, but they work in small ways? They’re subtle they get your ear and they whisper, “Listen to me I’ve been there.” “I fought and lost; you’ll lose too.” “That’s how they get you.” All these are examples and there are many more of the kind of this subtle whisper.
The whisper that becomes persistent. It’s sometimes difficult to observe because it comes from a loved one, it comes from a person of authority. How do you identify somebody as a crab in the crab pot that’s pulling you down? That’s pretty easy.
The Whispers of Defeat are Loud
How do you identify somebody who’s in the bottom of the crab pot, in the corner? This subtle form of persistence is sometimes difficult to observe. Because it comes from a loved one, it comes from a person in authority, it’s a whisper from love and authority. That whisper is as powerful as a coach’s whistle in a gymnasium, action stops.
It’s a balancing act. How do you look at somebody’s earned wisdom that they’re offering to you and sort it out and say, “I’m not so sure that that applies to me?” Does it come from a situation that doesn’t exist anymore?
Does it come from the age of buggy whips? Or does it carry an immutable truth, one that has spanned the time, the distance of generations? Are you listening to a person that has given up? Given up like the crabs in the bucket, they’re doing what they can do out of instinct? The action that fails all with whom it comes into contact with?
Yes, it’s a balancing act. Yes, the message does come from power it, does come from authority and it does come from loved ones. It’s a difficult task but to listen to the whispers of people that have given up on their dreams, it’s not your world it’s theirs.
Here is a video (15:42 long) with an in-depth explanation of the Crab Mentality
Another Back Channel Podcast about: The Stories Well Tell Ourselves
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KRIS WILDER
Kris Wilder is a martial artist based in Seattle Washington. He has authored many martial art books, including the classic, The Way of Kata. Making no apologies for his obsession of Football he can be found telling any who will listen about the nuances of the Canadian Football League.
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