The Angry Cupboard

Avoiding the Sunk-Cost Fallacy and Embracing Everyday Heroism

My friend Bodil, an expert knitter,¹ occasionally runs into problems with her projects. Maybe the color is unappealing, or the sweater doesn’t fit properly, or she just noticed a mistake several rows down. When this happens, Bodil sticks the project into what she refers to as the Angry Cupboard, where it can “marinate for a while.” After a week or so, Bodil feels ready to pick up the project again, fix the mistake, or, if the problem is truly intractable, rip the whole thing up and start over again.

I am aware that most of my readers are not knitters, but we all could benefit from an Angry Cupboard; we often need strategies to help us avoid the sunk-cost fallacy, “our tendency to follow through on something that we’ve already invested heavily in (be it time, money, effort, emotional energy, etc.), even when giving up is clearly a better idea.”

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Sweaters and Sunk Costs

A few months ago, Bodil and I went to a yarn festival, where I bought two skeins of hand-dyed yarn—just enough to make a lightweight sweater, or so I thought (she said darkly). After a month, the sweater was finished. “Oh dear,” I thought, as I surveyed my handiwork. “This looks like it was made for a child.” Since I am on the strapping, Amazonian end of the spectrum, my only hope for the sweater was that it would stretch out during blocking.

Readers, it did not stretch out during blocking. Into the Angry Cupboard it went!

Our Angry Cupboards give us time to work through our feelings of frustration and disappointment that a venture, plan, or project is not coming to fruition as we had hoped. I think we need to confront and experience these feelings of loss first, if we are to have any chance of abandoning sunk costs and trying something new.

In my case, after a fair amount of grumbling, I had to admit that there was nothing else to do but to start over. I ordered another skein of yarn, unpicked the seams I had carefully sewn up just the previous day, and frogged the entire sweater (this is what we knitters call unraveling, because we “rip it, rip it”), returning the whole thing to its primordial state, balls of yarn. It was a lesson in humility, as well as in entropy: It took a mere hour to undo the work of a month.

Almost done frogging!

I am now re-knitting the sweater in a larger size. It is tedious work, and frustrating too. The sweater won’t be perfect, but (to quote Monty Python on the size of the penguin’s brain if we were to enlarge the penguin to the size of a person), “and this is the point, it is larger than it was.”

This Story Is a Metaphor

I rarely talk politics in this Substack, but this one’s too important. After President Biden’s disastrous performance in the debate a few weeks ago, many leaders in the Democratic Party, including the President himself, seem to be stuck in the sunk-cost fallacy.² They are doubling down on their commitment to the President, excusing away the evidence that he will be unable to do the job for four more years, and unwilling to admit that the only solution is to start over with a younger candidate who can actually win.

They offer flimsy excuses, asking “Who are you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?” The President had a cold. Well, at his age a cold can actually be devastating, as we saw. The President is “dependably engaged” from 10am to 4pm. Well, unfortunately the presidency is a 24/7 job. The President was tired from international travel. Well, again, that is part of the job. I have even heard people floating conspiracy theories—for example that the President was roofied before the debate and that someone tinkered with his microphone before his ABC interview to make his voice sound weak and raspy. To which those of us in the reality-based community reply, in Biden’s own words, “Come on, man!”

For the record, the Biden Administration has accomplished great things for our country—especially the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS Act, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. And because many of my loved ones have suffered from dementia, I can say that based on my experience the President doesn’t seem to have dementia. But he is undeniably frail and foggy. Most of us know at least one octogenarian (or are one ourselves) and can attest that Biden’s condition is not surprising. At his age, people are vulnerable to rapid deterioration, from fit and in fine fettle one day to total incapacitation the next. The US presidency is the most important job in the world, and we need someone who can handle its demands.

Yes, we Democrats have invested our hopes, energy, money, and time in President Biden’s candidacy, and those are compelling sunk costs. Yes, the election is less than four months away, and the uncertainty ahead is stressful. But also, yes, Trump leads by 6 points in the most recent polls, and a whopping 74 percent of Americans think President Biden is too old for the job. Sunk-cost thinking has kept the President in the race long after it was clear he should drop out. But there is still time. If Biden leaves the race, things won’t be perfect. But, and this is the point, it will be better than it was. We need to frog that sweater and start fresh.

What can we regular folks do? We can talk publicly about the need for Biden to withdraw his candidacy, as I am doing here. We can withhold our political donations, and tell the DNC why. If our elected leaders are Democrats, we can urge them to use their position to persuade President Biden not to run, or, if they have already called for him to drop out, we can thank them.³ (Don’t try this if your elected leaders are Republicans; for understandable strategic reasons, Republican politicians want Biden to remain in the race.) For more on what we can do, I highly recommend this post:

To Stop Trump, Call Your Representatives & Ask Biden to Pass the Torch

The authors suggest possible alternate candidates; argue for mini-primaries to decide the new candidate democratically; reassure us that if Biden steps down, the new candidate can use his campaign funds; and offer templates we can use for our calls or emails to our elected representatives.

And finally, we can advocate for another way to be a hero.

Everyday Heroism

Our culture’s idea of heroism is sadly limited: We usually think of heroes as lone warriors—for example superheroes from the Marvel Universe who defeat the bad guys by throwing their fists around, or politicians who claim that “I alone can fix it.” In American media, the archetypal main character can also be an antihero—for example Philip Marlowe, the Man with No Name, Harry Bosch, or Jack Reacher—a lone wolf who takes on the powerful and triumphs against the odds. It doesn’t have to be that way. In the media and in our lives, we ought to celebrate everyday heroes, regular people who work together to accomplish their goals,⁴ who show humility and an openness to changing their minds, and who put the needs of others ahead of their own interests.

Perhaps the greatest act of heroism our country has ever seen was of this second, modest, self-sacrificing variety. In 1783, George Washington chose to give up power, resigning his commission as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army. In spite of the universal clamor for him to continue to serve as leader, he stepped back and retired to the countryside. He understood that our new nation had just fought a war so that the people, instead of a king, could rule. Washington’s courageous act is the reason our country is the oldest democracy in the world. But, to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, it’s a democracy if we can keep it—if President Biden chooses to be a patriotic hero in the humble, Washingtonian sense, and leaves the race.

Let’s close with the words of another American hero:

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How about you, readers? Do you think President Biden should drop out or stay in the race? And do you have an Angry Cupboard of your own—a way of nerving yourself to give up on a flawed project? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

The Tidbit

Bill Watterson famously ended Calvin and Hobbes while the strip was at the peak of its popularity, artistry, and originality. Watterson said he “did not want Calvin and Hobbes to coast into halfhearted repetition, as so many long-running strips do.” Watterson’s decision to quit while he was ahead is inspiring. In a world of Beetle Baileys and Hagar the Horribles, be a Calvin and Hobbes:

The last Calvin and Hobbes strip ever published. I found this image here.

1. You can read more about Bodil and see some of her beautiful work in Life Lessons from Knitting.

2. I had hoped that President Biden would announce he was stepping down over the July 4 holiday weekend, but alas it is not to be. Hence this post today.

3. The New York Times is keeping track of which prominent Democrats are urging the President to drop out of the race, and which are still firmly Team Biden. You can consult this handy list, which is being regularly updated, here.

4. I read a lot of mystery novels, not only from the US, but also from the UK, Germany, and Scandinavia. The contrast is amusing: In American mysteries, the hero typically goes it alone against a corrupt establishment, while in European mysteries, the crimes are solved by teams of people who like and respect each other, who delegate tasks and report back, and who nurture each other’s talents. It is a fascinating cultural difference.