Are the crabs aware of their situation? Are they actually consciously preventing the other crabs from escaping? Or are they just trying to grab on to anything they can get get out of the crab-pile?
Seems like a deeply flawed metaphor that will likely lead you astray.
Like, if a human meerely intends "to grab on anything they can to get out of the [human]-pile", & they're quite rude/destructive while doing so, they're still rude/destructive regardless of how sympathetic we may judge their intentions to be.
>is a phrase that describes a way of thinking best described by the phrase "if I can't have it, neither can you."
>Individually, the crabs could easily escape from the pot, but instead, they grab at each other in a useless "king of the hill" competition which prevents any from escaping and ensures their collective demise.