Self-improvement is always a good thing. This should be obvious to anyone reading this. Why shouldn’t we all attempt to improve ourselves? Who could be against striving to be a better person? Given how unpopular pessimists are, the idea that self-improvement is a bad thing doesn’t see a lot of takers. Overall, the only people who are opposed to it are those with a crab mentality. Crab mentality causes people to see others’ attempts at greatness as an opportunity to sneer at them. It’s called the “crab mentality” because it’s similar to what crabs do when they’re all put in a bucket. Any crab that tries to escape will get pulled down by its fellow crabs. Instead of helping one another climb out of the bucket, crabs tend to grab the legs of escaping crabs and pull them down. The crab mentality can be summarized as “If I can’t have it, neither can you.”
To put a fine point on it, crab mentality is evil. At its core, it’s always motivated by envy – the feeling that other people doing well is bad for one’s self-esteem. People with crab mentality who see others trying to improve themselves are that way because seeing others strive to be better makes them feel uncomfortable. When people see others advocating for some standard and starting to hold themselves to that standard, they might feel pressured by a sense of duty or shame if they are not themselves moving toward that standard. Thus, tearing others down becomes important for one’s self-esteem.
Of course, people with the crab mentality rarely admit that this is their motivation. Envy is an ugly, ugly emotion, after all. What they’ll oftentimes do instead is mask their crab mentality with a veil of righteousness. People who try to improve themselves will most often be met with accusations of being fake or inauthentic. For example, trying to become more Christlike will lead others to accuse you of not being perfect yourself. “You don’t act like a good Christian,” they’ll say, “so why are you going to church?” This gets things exactly backward though. In Matthew 9:12, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” Going to church and receiving God’s graces is supposed to help you become a better Christian. As St. Paul once said, “none are righteous” (Romans 3:10). Nobody is completely untouched by the sin of this world. Recognizing you have a problem is the first step to getting better! That’s why this argument is silly.
When other people do well, we should celebrate their success and use it as a model to follow for ourselves. We shouldn’t be trying to tear down others to make us feel better. Yet the crab mentality motivates people to do exactly that. Instead, act positively. If you are stuck in a rut, don’t let that get you down. You can find a way to get out of the pail and become a better person. If the people around you are being crabby, you have to find more motivated friends. A good friend doesn’t hold his fellows back from being all that they can be.