“He had fallen down the pit and was in the blue!
How to escape he just had no clue!
Then he felt glad as he saw his mate!
Happy that someone else is sharing his fate!”
In the movie Three Idiots, when their friend was assumed to have failed his two friends were sad! But when they find out that he had topped, they were more sad!
In a malayalam movie which is a cult classic, called Nadodikkattu; Mohanlal gets into trouble for having harassing his boss! He then feels happy when his friend also gets into the same trouble!
There are so many examples of this all over whether in life or in movies! When one is down and he or she is feeling down, he or she gets special pleasure when someone else is also down!
It is like how in the days of power cut and intermittent electrical supply, whenever the electricity used to go out in my house, the first thing my we would do is see if the neighbour has the supply or not! When they also were in the dark then we would feel happy!
Even in the school days also, when one used to get less marks then he or she would be sad but when his or her friend also gets less marks there is a mild feeling of happiness!
Now this is perfectly normal and of course a primitive behaviour! Within limits it is a perfect example of human mentality but when it becomes extreme in that when you fail, you try to pull others down then it is an evil phenomenon called the crab mentality!
So if you notice a pile of crabs in a bucket, where they all try to escape while pulling back any crab who manages to escape so that they’re back to their misery and the group’s collective demise!
According to Psychology Today, crab mentality is an analogy to the selfish and envious behavior of someone upon other people’s success. Crab mentality is also defined as someone’s tendency to pull down people around them who they consider are better than them in any aspect. People with crab mentality often think that if they can’t have it, then other people can’t have it too!
At an emotional level, crab mentality can stem from a deep-seated human need for self-esteem and social comparison.
A theory called the Tesser’s self-evaluation maintenance theory (SEM) suggests that individuals engage in self-evaluation not only through introspection but also through comparison with others, especially those within their close social circles.
So when someone close to us excels in areas we value, we might feel threatened and act in ways that downplay their achievements.
This mechanism can partly explain why individuals may attempt to pull down those who achieve more than themselves, as a way to protect their own self-esteem and social standing. Emotions such as envy may be generated when individuals feel threatened during self-evaluation. This can lead to a desire to diminish the well-being of others, particularly when their success highlights our own failures or inadequacies. This is very commonly seen especially among peers who tend to put others down or try to downplay their achievements!
Some amount of envy is the basic tendency of every normal human being but that envy must make you work more hard and better! If you cannot compete, do not become like the silencer from 3 Idiots who will try to sabotage the competitors!
In a similar context I chanced upon a beautiful movie called the Maidan starring Ajay; here also a disgruntled person whose ego is bruised tries his whole life to downplay and sabotage the career of on person and in that process the whole Indian Football team! A must watch film which shows how the bureaucracy those days made sure that we do not excel in sports! Watch it also as a tribute to the greatest coach who made sure we got a medal in football in Olympics! A feat which has not been repeated for the last 60 years! The man in question is Syed Abdul Rahim who was the pride of Bharat but I was really upset the way he smoked constantly!
Watch this movie and you will appreciate this legend! Try to pull yourself down to sleep though!
Shubh Ratri!
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