Welcome back to the Deep Dive. I am your host.
And today we're going to do something a little
different. Usually we're tearing apart a specific
business strategy or maybe looking at some new
piece of tech that's going to change how we work.
But today we are looking at language, specifically
an idiom. Right. And I'm here to walk us through
the research on this. It's a phrase I guarantee
everyone listening has used or, you know, at
least heard in a boardroom probably a dozen times
in the last year alone. Oh, absolutely. It is
the ultimate corporate warning label. The phrase
is, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
And I want to start by acknowledging something
that we usually ignore because it's such a cliche.
If you actually stop and visualize that image.
Horrifying. Seriously, if you strip away the
familiarity, you have a visual of someone tossing
a basin of wastewater out a window. There goes
the infant. It's a total disaster. It really
is. And that violence is actually crucial to
why it works. It's not a polite suggestion. It's
a shock tactic. It's designed to wake you up.
So here is the mission for today's Deep Dives.
We have a stack of notes on the etymology and
the historical usage of this phrase. We are going
to trace this back 500 years. We're going to
look at how it jumped from German satire to English
political discourse on slavery. But I don't just
want a history lesson. Right. You want the so
what? Like, why does this specific arrangement
of words stick with us for centuries? Exactly.
I want to understand what this idiom actually
teaches us about decision making. Because the
sources suggest this isn't just about being clumsy.
It's about a very specific cognitive failure
that happens to smart people. It is. And to understand
that failure, we really have to start with the
foundational definition provided in the source
material. It categorizes this strictly as an
avoidable error. An avoidable error. I mean,
avoidable. implies intent or at least the capacity
for control, right? You didn't have to do it.
Precisely. It's defined as an error where something
of value, the essential, is eliminated while
trying to get rid of something unwanted, the
superfluous. But there is a second part to that
definition in the research that I found really
fascinating. It attributes this error to excessive
zeal. Excessive zeal. That is such a specific
diagnostic. Sounds almost medical. It changes
the whole complexion of the mistake, doesn't
it? It implies you aren't being lazy, you aren't
being malicious, you are being too enthusiastic.
Right, like you're just... You are so eager to
fix the problem, to clean the house, cut the
budget, reorganize the apartment, that your momentum
carries you right off the cliff. That resonates
so much. It's the manager who comes in to fix
a team culture and ends up firing the high performers
because they, you know, push back on the new
rules. That is a classic baby out with the bathwater
scenario. You're so... focused on the dirty water,
the bad culture, the old way of doing things,
that you purge the value along with it. So we
have this framework, avoidable error caused by
excessive zeal. But this didn't start in a modern
management textbook. I was actually surprised
by the origin story here. This isn't originally
English. No, not at all. If you want the source
code for this one, you really have to go to Germany.
The idiom derives from the German proverb, das
Kind mit dem Bad ausschütten. My German is non
-existent, but the translation notes say that
means way. Pouring the child out with the bath.
And we can date this with incredible precision.
The earliest recorded instance appears in the
year 1512. 1512. So we are talking about a world
that is barely out of the Middle Ages. This is
pre -Shakespeare. Right. And the context is really
telling. It appeared in a work by Thomas Merner.
The book was called Narn Beshwaring. Which translates
to? Appeal to fools. Appeal to fools. Okay, I
love that. So the very first time this concept
enters the written record, it's not in a medical
text or a parenting guide. It's in a satire about
idiots. Exactly. Murner included a woodcut illustration
in the text. And it is blunt. It literally depicts
a woman tossing a baby out along with the wastewater.
But because it's in appeal to fools, we know
exactly how Murner viewed this. This wasn't a
tragedy of circumstance. It was an act of stupidity.
It's a failure of discrimination. That's the
key word, discrimination. The fool is the person
who cannot distinguish between the waste and
the treasure. The fool treats the entire contents
of the tub as one object, tub contents, and just
dumps it. So the wise person sees water and baby
as two separate entities sharing a space. The
fool just sees stuff to get rid of. Exactly.
And the fool acts with that excessive zeal we
talked about. Just get it out of here. Now, usually
these folks sayings stay in the realm of peasants
and woodcuts. You know, a stitch in time saves
nine, that sort of thing. But what's interesting
about this specific phrase is that it didn't
stay there. It graduated. It really did. It moved
from folk wisdom to high intellectual theory
very quickly. The source material lists a who's
who of German intellectual history who used this
phrase as a core part of their arguments. Give
us the list. Who are we talking about? We are
talking about Martin Luther, the reformer. Johannes
Kepler, the astronomer who essentially rewrote
the laws of planetary motion. Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe, the literary giant, and Otto von
Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor who unified Germany.
That is a staggering lineup. You have religion,
science, literature, and statecraft. And later
you have novelists like Thomas Mann and Gunther
Grass. But looking at that first group, Luther,
Kepler, Bismarck, do you see the pattern? Well...
They're all disruptors. They change the world.
They are system level disruptors. And that's
why this specific metaphor became so valuable
to them. Think about Martin Luther. OK, so let's
unpack Luther. He is trying to reform the church
in the 1500s. Right. And let's be honest, the
church in the 1500s, it had plenty of dirty water,
corruption, selling of indulgences, political
maneuvering. Luther's goal is to throw that water
out. He wants to clean the house. But, and this
is the terrifying part for him, he has to do
it without destroying the Christian faith itself.
That is the baby. If his zeal to clean the church
destroys the believer's connection to God or
fractures the foundation of the faith, he has
failed. He has thrown the baby out with the bathwater.
That puts the excessive zeal definition into
high definition. Luther was accused of exactly
that, of being so zealous against corruption
that he broke the church. Exactly. He had to
be incredibly precise and then look at Kepler.
Science is a little different though. science
is about replacing old ideas with new ones true
but kepler was operating in a time when astronomy
was mixed up with astrology and ancient greek
philosophy he had to filter through centuries
of bad data and wrong assumptions bath water
to find the mathematical truths hidden inside
so if he just said all ancient science is garbage
he loses right if he throws out the whole classical
tradition he might lose the geometric principles
he needs to prove his theory He had to save the
baby, the data, while tossing the bathwater,
the superstition. So for these guys, this wasn't
just a cute saying. It was a strategic risk assessment.
It was the central tension of their work. How
do I change the paradigm without destroying the
foundation? And Bismarck. That feels like the
highest stakes of all. Statecraft is the ultimate
bathwater challenge. Bismarck is trying to unify
a bunch of disparate German starts into one nation.
He has to get rid of the old, inefficient local
governances. That's the dirty water. But if he
strips away too much of the local culture or
identity? You get rebellion. You lose the nation
you're trying to build. You lose the baby. It's
fascinating that a phrase from a woodcut about
a foolish housewife became the guiding principle
for the unification of Germany. It speaks to
how universal the problem is. Categorization
is hard work. Whether you are washing a baby
or building an empire, you have to know what
to keep. So that's the German pedigree. It's
deep. It's intellectual. It's high stakes. But
we are speaking English. How did it cross the
channel? Did it just drift over with trade? Not
exactly. We can actually point to a specific
literary bridge, a writer named Thomas Carlyle.
Carlyle. OK. When is this? This is 1849. So we've
jumped forward about 300 years from Myrna's woodcut.
And what is the context? Because the notes here
mention slavery. Yes. This is where we have to
be really precise with the historical context.
Carlyle wrote an essay in 1849 addressing what
was known then as the Negro question. That is
a heavy pivot from German astronomy. How does
the bathwater idiom fit into a debate on slavery?
Well, Carlyle was adapting the German proverb
to make a point about abolition and economics.
Let's look at the specific text because his phrasing
is unique and it tells us how he viewed the problem.
I have the quote here. Carlisle wrote, The Germans
say you must empty out the bathing tub, but not
the baby along with it. Fling out your dirty
water with all zeal and set it careening down
the kennels, but try if you can keep the little
child. Try if you can keep the little child.
It's that word zeal again. Fling out your dirty
water with all zeal. Yes. And based strictly
on the text provided, we can see his argument
structure. The dirty water he is referring to
is the institution of slavery. He is acknowledging
that it needs to be flung out. So he's engaging
with the abolitionist argument. He's saying,
yes, dump the water. He is, but he uses the idiom
to insert a condition. He's warning the British
public and the government. He's saying, essentially,
yes, end the system, but be careful. In his view,
the baby represented the people, the enslaved
population, and the economic structure that sustained
them. So he's arguing that a chaotic, zealous
destruction of the system would harm the very
people it was meant to help. That's the application.
He's warning against unintended consequences.
He's saying that if you let your moral zeal drive
the process without practical safeguards, you
destroy the human beings caught in the gears.
It's a very stark application. We went from a
woodcut about foolishness to a geopolitical debate
about human bondage. It shows the elasticity
of the metaphor. It works for household chores,
it works for scientific revolution, and it works
for massive social upheaval. But the core mechanism
is always the same. You identify a bad thing,
slavery, corruption, dirt. You generate energy
to remove it. That's the zeal. And in that rush,
you threaten the good thing, the people, the
faith, the child. And the English language didn't
stop with Carlisle. We've kept trying to reinvent
this. The source material mentions a few variations
that have popped up over the years. Yeah, there
was one I hadn't heard before. The champagne
variation. Ah, yes. Throw out the champagne with
the cork. That is attributed to George Bernard
Shaw, right? Yes, specifically in his writings
on Shakespeare. I have to say, I prefer the baby
version. The champagne one feels incredibly low
stakes. It is low stakes. That's why I think
it never really caught on in the same way. If
you throw out the champagne, what happens? You're
out 50 bucks. You're disappointed. You have to
drink water. Right. Nobody dies. But with the
baby, it's tragic. It's irreversible. And I think
that's why the original idiom has survived for
500 years. It bypasses the logic center of your
brain and goes straight to the amygdala. It scares
you into being careful. It raises the cost of
the error. Exactly. If the cost of the error
is... just spilled wine, I might be careless.
If the cost is a dead infant, I'm going to check
the tub twice. There was another variation in
the notes that was less about the image and more
about the grammar. Empty the baby out with the
bath. Yes. This one is subtle but interesting
linguistically. Don't throw the baby out focuses
on the object, the baby. You are holding the
baby and throwing it. But empty the baby out.
It focuses on the action of the vessel. You are
emptying the tub. The baby just happens to be
contents. That sounds even more negligent. It
sounds mechanical. Like you didn't even know
the baby was there. It reinforces that idea of
the blind spot. When you empty, you are focused
on the void. You want the tub empty. You aren't
looking at what is leaving. Which brings us back
to that. So what we promised in the beginning,
we've looked at the history, the intellectuals,
the variations. But if we distill this down for
someone listening today, someone who isn't unifying
Germany or reforming the church, what is the
takeaway? The synthesis really comes back to
that second definition, discarding the essential
while retaining the superfluous. It sounds like
a categorization problem. It is fundamentally
a categorization problem. And it's a problem
of speed. Think about the zeal component. Zeal
acts fast. Disgust acts fast. If I see dirty
water, my instinct is get this away from me immediately.
Right. It's a purge instinct. I just want it
gone. But discernment, figuring out what is essential,
is slow. You have to stop. You have to put your
hands in the murky water. You have to feel around
for the child. And nobody wants to put their
hands in dirty water. Exactly. It's unpleasant.
It's much easier to just kick the tub over. So
the avoidable error happens when we prioritize
the relief. of getting rid of the bad thing over
the duty of protecting the good thing. That's
a brilliant way to put it. We prioritize relief
over protection. We prioritize the emptying over
the baby. The source material mentions that this
is an avoidable error. I find that word avoidable
Almost hopeful. It is hopeful. It implies that
this isn't fate. You don't have to lose the baby.
We often present these things as trade -offs.
Oh, well, to make an omelet, you have to break
a few eggs. To fix the company, we had to fire
the whole department. Right. We rationalize the
loss of the baby as collateral damage. Exactly.
But this idiom argues against that. It says,
no, you idiot, you didn't have to throw the baby
out. You just needed to be more careful. You
needed to filter the water. The goal is a clean
baby, not an empty room. I love that. The goal
is a clean baby, not an empty room. That really
sums up the wisdom of those German intellectuals.
Whether it's Luther or Bismarck, they knew that
an empty room, a destroyed church, a broken state
was a failure, even if it was clean. We have
covered a lot of ground today. We started with
a 1512 satire called Appeal to Fools. which is
still the best book title I've heard all year.
It's a total classic. We traveled through the
mines of Kepler and Bismarck, seeing how they
navigated the dirty water of their eras. We saw
Carlyle use the phrase to warn against the dangers
of zealous reform in the 1840s. And we've landed
right back here. It's a long journey for a proverb
about hygiene. But it all comes down to that
one moment of decision, standing the window with
the tub. And taking that one extra second to
check what's inside. I want to leave you with
a final thought, inspired by that George Bernard
Shaw variation. The champagne and the cork. Okay,
let's hear it. We all have problems we are trying
to solve right now. Maybe you're reorganizing
a team. Maybe you're ending a relationship. Maybe
you're just cleaning out your garage. You are
ready to pop the cork. You have the zeal. But
the question remains. In your rush to solve the
problem, to pop that cork, are you about to spill
the champagne? Are you so focused on the release
of pressure that you're losing the value? That
is a question worth sitting with. Think about
it and check the tub. Thanks for joining us on
this deep dive. See you next time.