Terrorizing Villages with Intelligent Remarks

favorite comedies that ended too soon ≡ Better Off Ted

The metaphor is often used to speak about how crabs will pull each other down and none of them will make it out, and the parallel it is supposed to mirror is that humans will do the same and not help one another. The layer OP is pointing out is that, like crabs, humans are often being placed in bad, unnatural situations by those with more power; for example, capitalism (and those who foster it) in the USA has made a concentrated effort to cause humans under its influence to act against one another instead of focusing on the actual problem (which is, ironically, exactly what people using the metaphor do, by focusing on the crabs instead of the bucket/person who put the crabs there). Capitalist ideals tell people look at those other crabs in the bucket that one makes more money than you do, that one wants to steal your job, that one is going to escape and that's unfair. It wants you to believe that the other crabs are the problem when they're not, or at least that's not a complete picture.

When the metaphor is used to describe human behavior with no recognition of the context for why the crabs are in the bucket, it loses a great deal of potency specifially because the crabs are not behaving naturally, because they've been put into an unnatural situation by a force more powerful than themselves, and one which causes a great deal of stress and even panic. At the end of the day though, in most situations, humans don't suffer crab bucket mentality. If we did, we wouldn't form communities. We wouldn't care for our sick, our injured, our elderly. We wouldn't rush to the sites of natural disasters to offer help. We wouldn't have team sports, or activity clubs, or have worked out daycare and group schooling, or made unions a thing. Gofundme and kickstarter wouldn't have gotten off the ground. As often as we are able to do, we help each other... but those more powerful than us can still place us into situations where we are so stressed about just trying to survive that we cannot think beyond ourselves. We are not immune to propaganda, I believe the saying goes.

In the pilot, for example, she hears about a family of five kids whose single mother was a victim of gun violence and she thinks “I’d better pray for them to find a safe and loving home” and God is like “Cool. Their plane lands at 2:30. Go pick them up.”

And she’s like What and God tells her he’s super over her praying about shit and AT BEST doing nothing and at worst actively harming people by her behavior, so now she gets five kids to raise as a lesson in compassion. God assures her she’ll be fine. And it’s not like she can say no because it’s GOD.

But like, if you don’t find any turtles it might be that there are no turtles or maybe you’re just really shitty at looking for turtles and maybe you THINK you saw a turtle over there or maybe it was just a stick. Maybe there are only a few turtles. Maybe you need to do something special to find the turtles. Maybe a bunch of these rocks are actually turtles but you couldn’t tell them apart. Maybe there are no turtles. You have no idea. Meanwhile some people are saying “Oh there have to be turtles! You’ll find them eventually ;)” or “How many turtles have you found in your pond?” or “Try planting some vegetables at the shore to attract the turtles.” Or “Oh no! What disaster happened to your pond that there are no turtles?” And you’re just standing there wet with an empty net and a tired expression.

But whatever because whether there are turtles or fish or not your pond’s ecology works just fine without them because that’s what eco-communities do they form a system around what they have. You aren’t missing anything if you don’t have turtles you just have a pond system without turtles. If someone tried to change you by pouring a bunch of turtles into your pond it would probably fuck something up.

I have a non-fic related question triggered by an ask you answered earlier (the one about the demi/ace character who doesn’t like to receive sexual stimulation and how to convey that in fiction).

Is that a thing? Liking to give pleasure but being entirely uninterested in receiving it (regardless of the emotional connection formed with a partner)?

I am like that and I never met anyone who understood what I meant when I tried to explain it. I always assumed I wasn’t ace because I like giving pleasure, and I enjoy sex under that aspect. I excluded being demisexual because I feel like this regardless of the depth of the emotional bond with my partner. I never found a name or a label for it, and I was wondering if there’s one. I’d love to feel part of a community if it exists.

it’s absolutely a thing! I personally know at least three people for whom that applies to various degrees.