Riff: The Sunken Devil Brung Ya

Don't worry. It's not really about the devil.

It wouldn’t be a saying if people didn’t say it, right? Received wisdom matters! Lots of smart people have passed along lots of smart insights, often in simple, unpretentious proverbs or maxims. If only they all agreed about what the wisdom actually was!

I have a fascination (to a probably unhelpful degree, if we’re honest) with folksy sayings, maxims, aphorisms; your basic “words of wisdom.” 

Anyone who has worked with me knows this. (I’ll bet it’s exhausting.)

I’m no kind of linguist, though — I’m no kind of scholar at all — so it’s not like I have any great insight to offer. But I do really love those moments of sudden cognizance when I hear a well-worn idiom or metaphor and think, I wonder where that actually came from? And if it actually means what I’ve always assumed it means? 

Luckily, my lack of scholarly rigor is matched by my assiduity as an internet rabbit-hole diver. Let’s jump in.

I recently heard someone reference the phrase, “you got to dance with them what brung ya.” 

I first encountered this delightful bon mot when I read Molly Ivins’ book with that title way back in ‘99 or ‘00. I’ve tossed the phrase around occasionally over the years. Divorced from any particular context, it’s just wonderfully evocative: it has this great sense of being doggedly loyal…or possibly wistfully fatalistic…or maybe grimly admonitory. Or maybe all three!¹

But having not thought about that phrase in a while, upon this recent encounter I realized I couldn’t recall — if indeed I ever knew — where it actually came from. 

The internet seems to agree it was Darrell Royal, coach of the University of Texas football team, who made the phrase famous. In his well-known 1968 utterance of it, his actual quote was, “There’s an old saying, ‘You dance with the one that brung ya.’” So he didn’t lay claim to authorship. This writer suggests (without citation) that it “traces back to the early 1920s,” and this one calls it (also without citation) “an old proverb.”

In any event, though it’s often attributed to Coach Royal, he 1) probably did introduce it popularly to the rest of the country, but 2) didn’t actually coin it.²

It’s not all that important, of course, where or from whom it came. Except…the idiomatic resonances a phrase like this takes on can depend upon its source and evolution. For example, in this case, the coach was suggesting that in the forthcoming championship game he would continue with the players and the strategy that had gotten them there. “Stick with success,” but in a wonderfully folksy phraseology.

“You dance with the one that brung ya” is a statement of a norm and an admonition to follow that norm, but it’s also a piece of metaphorical advice (or, at least, that’s what it’s come to be). In sports, business, maybe life: stick with the people and the strategy that got you the success you have. You owe it to them, sure, but it’s also just the best path. It’s what you should do because it’s right, but also because it’s effective.

Thinking about all this brought to mind another idiom: “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.” This is a much older phrase (possibly a 14th century Irish proverb), but it’s easy enough to find examples of it being used bang up to current times. As well it might be — it’s a useful sentiment. 

Weirdly, these axioms are almost mirror images of each other. The first one means, “everything’s been successful so far, better stick with it or it might get worse,” and the second means “everything’s been terrible so far, but better not risk changing it or it might get even worse.”  Huh.

They both advocate for staying a path, continuing the status quo, no matter if that is good or bad. They posit that change is risky — riskier, even, than obdurately plowing forward.

Neato. But what the hell does any of that have to do with Ars Pandemonium? 

As it happens, I also have a fascination with certain business-management principles like, for instance, “the sunk cost fallacy.” (That also has a kind of folksy ring to it, doesn’t it?)

I’m no more an economist than I am a linguist — and yes, I do feel I must continue to emphasize my complete lack of scholarly bona fides — but as a curious enthusiast of decision-making rubrics, I’m just very taken by notions like this one: the sunk cost fallacy describes a plainly, demonstrably rational construct that is nonetheless extremely difficult to implement in the real world.

Essentially, the notion suggests a failure of decision making (it’s a fallacy!) that stems from taking into account previous investment when considering further investment. 

Well it’s a little more involved than that, but it’s basically the tendency — which I’m convinced we all share to some degree — to think, “I’ve spent so much to this point, it’ll be cheaper to finish than to start over”...even when “finishing” is clearly not going to achieve the goal we want, thereby wasting even more investment.

There are plenty of folksy aphorisms to warn against being fooled by the sunk cost fallacy, of course: “don’t throw good money after bad” comes immediately to mind, as does, “cut your losses.”

But isn’t it interesting³ how other folk wisdom can seem to support the mindset behind sunk cost? For instance…I don’t know, maybe “you got to dance with them what brung you,” say, or “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t?”

It’s a matter of endless wonder to me how we ever make any decisions at all. But we do! 

As managers and leaders, we often make big, important decisions (or at least, they can feel big and important). For these, one assumes that information has been gathered, outcomes have been considered, experts have been consulted. Consequences have been weighed.

But we also make countless — innumerable — little decisions, all the damn time. Just constantly. 

Some are vanishingly ephemeral and unimportant, while others turn out to cause hurricanes on the other side of the world.⁴ Some are easily overridden, retracted, or rethought. But others take us down pathways that create, for better or for worse, an enduring new reality.

Either way, to make these instantaneous decisions we rely on experience, intuition, knowledge, expertise — all those attributes we presumably possess to be in this position to begin with.⁵ And what makes up those? Education and formal training, sure, and an accumulation of painfully learned don’t-touch-the-stove lessons. 

But also this vast sea of insightful, contradictory, simplistic but wise, outdated but timeless — sometimes completely inscrutable — received wisdom. I just love it.

How about you, dear readers? Any particular folk sayings, knowing bon mots, or insightful truisms that you rely on? Or that vex you? Or lure you into simplistic or overly-comfortable thinking? Share in the comments!

1. I did sometimes feel maybe a little appropriative dipping into what is obviously Southern folk wisdom as a dorky Northern Californian. I try not to get tripped up on such things, but I also try to be respectful…and it sure is hard to say that phrase without affecting a drawl or a twang.

2. It has a literal meaning too, of course, involving being someone’s date to a dance, I guess. Feels like going too far into that analysis is going to take me to some tough places…feels like opening a can of Problematic Cultural Reference is the wrong recipe for this fun little essay. So I’m going to leave that in the cupboard. We’ll stick with the common usage, not the literal one.

3. Yes, it is interesting, says me.

4. Look! Another one: the butterfly effect! And apparently we tend to use that one wrong, too!

5. Also luck. Mostly luck.