Crabs, Cluelessness, and Radical Acceptance

I had just finished lunch and was about to put my bowl in the sink when I noticed something in the corner of my eye.

Crabs in a big metal bowl.

I barely registered them at first, and only glancing again did I begin to comprehend the situation. Four blue crabs laid piled atop one another, moving lethargically then and again. I realised with horror that they were still alive.

I looked at my parents, dread filling my heart.

“These crabs… they’re still alive. How are you going to… kill them?”

I don’t know why I asked. Maybe I knew what they were going to say. Maybe I needed to hear them say it.

“We’re going to steam them,” my mom said, unaware of any wrongdoing.

My worst fears were confirmed. Horrible images flashed through my mind. I imagined them, still alive, struggling feebly as the scalding vapor burned every fiber of their beings. And all so my parents could eat their flesh. I shuddered.

“You’re going to steam them alive? Do you know how painful that would be for them? At least kill them humanely before you do that!”

For me, such an act was almost unprecedented. I’d gone vegan in my senior year of high school, and I’d asked my parents and sister to consider going vegan or vegetarian. But I’d never tried to force them to do anything. If anything, they were always trying to force me to eat animal product on the grounds that my health was suffering.

But seeing those crabs right in front of me, knowing that without my intervention they would suffer incredibly painful deaths, spurred me to action. I couldn’t let that happen.

And maybe I should’ve stopped there. As an Effective Altruist, a core tenet of mine is to act effectively. From a purely rational perspective, to invest more in keeping the crabs alive and happy would be trading off on the welfare of many more other beings who could use that money, such as farmed animals, and would thus be ineffective. However, finding “humane” ways of killing was not easy. Either one needed a special electrical instrument, which we did not have, or one had to stab the crab through their underside. I felt torn. I paced back and forth. I asked my friends for help. Their opinions were divided. One thought I should try to keep them alive. The other felt that merely ensuring as humane a death as possible was sufficient.

In the end, I realised that I had no choice. Seeing them move their claws and exhale little bubbles of air moved something deep and subtle within me. I had to make an effort to keep them alive. I found myself driving down to the nearest Petco in search of supplies.

That was when I really began to understand how out of my depth I was. I didn’t know what crabs ate. I didn’t know how much space they needed. I didn’t know what type of water they lived in. I didn’t even know what type of crab they were! And the staff, as helpful as they tried to be, couldn’t help me either. The internet didn’t care about the crabs I had; it only had articles on hermit crabs. I was completely and utterly clueless.

I realised even something as simple as the case of these four crabs was subject to complex cluelessness: that is, there were significant choices that I could make that could turn out to be positive or negative, and it wasn’t clear what the probabilities of a positive/negative outcome were. For example: I could buy marine salt to try to keep the crabs alive with the idea that the crabs probably were used to a brackish environment. But again, I didn’t know with certainty what type the crabs were, so I couldn’t be sure that they preferred brackish water. It was also possible that the people who had sold the crabs had kept them in freshwater, so adding salt could be counterproductive. And maybe the crabs would die anyway, and all that money would be wasted. Many of the decisions I had to make over the next minutes, hours, and days were like this.

I also knew that this whole thing hardly mattered in the larger scheme of things. I knew what markets for crustaceans and other marine creatures tended to look like. The crabs I had taken under my wing were just a drop in a giant bucket. Doubtless, many more crabs were being boiled or steamed alive. Many chickens, too. I had not forgotten this, but my present situation made me acutely aware of it. I was reminded uncomfortably of my early days as a vegan, when the truth of suffering billions weighed like the world upon one’s shoulders.

And in the midst was my mother’s self-defense of her freedom of choice; an implicit plea for exoneration. There were many things I wished to say; not least: “Don’t you understand that this isn’t about you? You were about to scald four sentient beings to death and you’re worried about your freedom?”

It was wyrd that this all happened during the week where, in Dialectical Behavior Therapy, we were to practice Radical Acceptance. Radical Acceptance is a powerful concept that (I think) draws from Dharmic wisdom, which holds that life is suffering and suffering is craving. Radical acceptance is defined as:

… all the way, complete, and total… accepting in your mind, your heart, and your body… it’s when you stop fighting reality, stop throwing tantrums because reality is not the way you want it, and let go of bitterness

It was through this experience that I had an opportunity to truly practise radical acceptance. For here was a situation which I had been thrown into involuntarily, where I had done nothing wrong yet was still saddled with the consequences. Here was a situation where I was faced with myriad uncertainties, with no assurances of right and wrong beyond “don’t let them burn to death”. Here was a situation in which I tried to do the right thing, and was thought crazy for it. Here was a situation that exposed how truly powerless I was, and how hopelessly distant the world was from my ideals of goodness and justice. I was often surprisingly numb, but sometimes enraged. I had moments where I wanted to lash out, to say “fuck you” to whoever happened to be in front of me.

It was in those moments that radical acceptance proved extremely effective. For it helped me to let go of unhelpful thoughts and feelings rather than clinging to them. When I was angry or depressed, I returned to the thought: “This is the way things are. All I can do is be as effective as I will be”.

Acceptance is not being happy with the situation, nor even being okay with it. It is simply the relaxing of rigid resistance to what is real, and the firm and gentle commitment to effectiveness.

Acceptance helped me to navigate the next few days with grace. I placed the three crabs that survived the first hours in plastic bins with dechlorinated water. I made arrangements with a friend to give him the crabs, as he was willing and able to take care of them in the long term. When no vegan crab food was to be found, I searched for viable substitutes. I opened dialogue with my mom, letting her know that I didn’t hate her while gently but firmly making the case against purchasing live animals for consumption. And when the crabs lost their vigor and died, one by one, I wrapped them in plastic bags before placing them in the garbage. The last piece of acceptance was accepting that I would not bury them, because they could contain parasites that could affect the local population.

And while I still felt angry, anxious, depressed, and numb, I did not feel as bitter. I did not struggle much with hatred or resentment, either towards my parents or towards the world. This did not make me any less effective as an advocate for the crabs; if anything, it made me more effective, because I did not do anything to make my parents want to escalate. Amid external chaos and pressure, I was able to act effectively and remain in touch with my core values. I was not overwhelmed by the darkness of the world nor the tension of the mind.

And perhaps the deepest challenge of all: I began to understand, more than ever before, how deeply clueless I and everyone else were and continue to be.

And I’ve begun to accept it.