My abiding memory of the Leaving Cert is of being in a Dublin boarding school the night before an exam, cramming the last morsels of useless knowledge into my jaded head, listening to a battered tape recorder blasting out a tinny version of Moonage Daydream by Bowie. In my final stretch in school, Bowie was my companion. His music was the soundtrack of that Leaving Cert year.
For us, caught in the 1980s conformity of the CAO and the points race, Bowie was evidence of a crazy, wonderful, open world beyond the dirge of Peig, quadratic equations and the riveting lessons in the life cycle of a liver fluke.
This extraordinarily creative and extremely courageous performer, who constantly reinvented himself, is a model to all who want to live a sovereign life. This was an artist who was endlessly borrowing, customising and innovating. His curiosity was limitless. And, like all truly independent people, he was working right up to the last day. What else could he do?
He wasn’t all drama, theatrics and image; there was profound social commentary too. In 1972, who else could have written “A cop knelt and kissed the feet of a priest/ And a queer threw up at the sight of that”?
Remember, this was a time when the police force in Britain, and of course Ireland, were protecting paedophile priests, and gay men were regularly being slurred and depicted by the Church as depraved sexual predators your children wouldn’t be safe around.
Is it any wonder the queer threw up?
However, today I am going to write not about his music (there are loads of musos who are much better informed than I on that) but about him – and, sticking with the Leaving Cert theme, what parents could learn from him.
I am going to suggest that there are two models of parenting: the Bowie Method and the Grind Method. I am going to argue that the Bowie Method, in a world of shocks, uncertainty and change, will make our kids much more robust and give them a better shot in life.
The Bowie Method is a way of looking at the world which allows you to embrace change and challenge and not rule anything out. This will make our kids strong, adaptable and flexible.
The Grind Method, on the other hand, which is the chosen method of broad sections of the competitive middle classes, will make our children fragile, inflexible and exposed. The Grind Method might get them into good universities, but by telling them what to learn and what not to learn, the Grind Method narrows their ability to deal with the world, which is constantly throwing up all sorts of surprises.
The Grind Method – which puts huge store in conventional benchmarks of success, status, and the credibility that titles bestow on people – is destined to fail in the 21st century.
The Grind Method limits teenagers’ ability to think for themselves by giving them answers rather than the serendipity of that beautiful journey of trial and error. The Grind Method will get them jobs in the professions, but what happens to the person inside and what happens to the expert in a world of generalists?
Teenagers need to be trained to deal with ambiguity, not certainty. As the great thinker Nassim Taleb argues, the key characteristic for a sovereign life, one that ultimately doesn’t depend on the suit you wear or the title you possess or the company you work for, is not to be fragile. It is essential to be what he terms “anti-fragile”.
David Bowie was anti-fragile.
Being anti-fragile means being able to deal with the shocks and nasty surprises the world throws up, like unemployment, a collapse in house prices or a sudden disappearance of your industry. Being anti-fragile means you get stronger when these changes occur; you not only survive, but thrive on change. This means we have to embrace uncertainty.
When you think about it, most of modern life seeks to minimise uncertainty in life. The Leaving Cert reward system, which places the supposedly most secure professions at the top of the pecking order, creates a series of incentives for teenagers to embrace a structured, pre-ordained life.
That would all be okay if the world wasn’t changing so rapidly. If we were in a nice version of the Soviet Union, seeking this structured life would make sense. But we live now in a period of immense change, where the person who is resilient enough to roll with the punches is the person who wins.
You can only roll with the punches if you are prepared – and if you understand that often you can’t see the punches coming.
This means a lifestyle and a career that embraces new things, does new things and never seeks the stultifying refuge of status. It means taking risks and embracing risk.
This is where Bowie comes in.
This was a man who knew no fear and lived a truly full life, involving his talent in cutting-edge movements and speaking out – rarely but effectively – on a variety of issues, from racism (on MTV back in 1983) to the enormous disruptive power of the internet (on BBC with Paxman in 1995).
This was also the artist who harnessed the power of the financial markets via Bowie Bonds. In 1997, worth an estimated $917 million, Bowie became the first artist to securitise the rights to his future royalty earnings and sold them on privately to the Prudential Insurance Company of America. We’re talking about the royalty rights to a discography of 25 albums recorded between 1969 and 1990: a total of 287 songs. In return, Bowie secured a cool $55 million, with these Bowie Bonds offering a 7.9 per cent annual coupon over a ten-year period. Receiving this lump sum payment enabled Bowie to invest and protect his wealth through diversification, rather than receiving a stream of royalty payments in dribs and drabs over the following decade.
In 1996, Bowie was among the very first to release an internet-only single, Telling Lies. It was downloaded over 300,000 times from his website. This was back when dial-up connection and floppy disks reigned supreme, so that’s pretty impressive.
A 1999 interview with a sceptical Jeremy Paxman in many ways sums up how ahead of his time Bowie was, in particular about the potential power of the internet: “I think we’re on the cusp of something exhilarating and exciting. . . it’s going to crush our idea of what mediums really are.”
David Bowie: visionary, creative genius, poster boy for change, the essence of being anti-fragile and the ultimate role model for teenagers everywhere!
I think we’ve stopped educating our children, we just teach them things. I remember doing my Leaving Cert (History if I recall correctly),in 1984 and being told by a Jesuit priest before the exam to ‘get in there and say what you think’. The Leaving Cert Student of today goes in with about forty pages of memorized notes and spews out what he has been told to learn.This gets him points and he goes to university where learning stuff off by heart is of little use to him…but he’ll get a degree and hopefully a job in Australia or Canada… Read more »
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An interesting perspective on Bowie’s influence. He may have been an advocate of change but no sure what is actually offered.
I like the ‘anti-fragil’ concept and agree an exam based education system is inadequate for the future employment prospects/opportunities of future generations.
Without doubt many of the’so called’ safe jobs of today will vanish with the growing emergence of AI (artiifical Intelligence) and Robotics.
Are the days of opportunity through employment numbered?
Jasus David, Irish mothers “place the supposedly most secure professions at the top of the pecking order” by telling Johnny and Mary that they should be doctors and vets, thus driving up demand and increasing the points needed.
Peter Hitchens yesterday: “Only a society that had lost all sense of taste and proportion would mark the death of David Bowie as if some great light had gone out. He wasn’t Beethoven or Shakespeare. He wasn’t even Elvis. And it’s interesting that the Cultural Elite so easily forgave him for opening and explicitly praising the Nazis. “In general, I find, they’ll forgive everything provided you’re in favour of promiscuous sex and lots of illegal drugs. I was also fascinated to see Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, joining in the Bowie-mania and talking of ‘relishing what he was, what he… Read more »
He had a few decent songs and he seemed like a nice bloke, that’s about it. All the fuss is over the top – he took steps to try to miminize it himself, which was very admirable in my book, but the lemmings will do as they wish.
Rest in Peace, I feel most sorry for his daughter who is 15/16 – very sad for her to lose her Dad at that age.
My God Hitchens sounds like such a persecriptive tool! Sex, drugs and rock n roll are all part of a full life – as is economics, mathematics, reading, sport and religion and lots of other stimulants.
Best
David
‘David Bowie on 9/11 and God. Bob Guccione Jr. Talks to David Bowie About the Future of Rock ‘N’ Roll—Not to Mention God, 9/11 and Ozzy.’ “…it’s about context, it’s like this confluence of ideas, there has been anxiety in the air 10, 15 years now. There’s a burden of expectations and disappointments, especially when we came into the 21st century. We’ve created such a terrible set of potential scenarios for the destruction of everything that we hold dear and love. And it’s like we’ve become immune to the idea of the bomb. I remember the Cuban [missile] crisis when… Read more »
1. In the not too distance future work/labour based employment will be a thing of the past. That is the single biggest challenge facing humanity. It will challenge our anti-fragile big time and if you want an Armageddon scenario…………………….. In the “immortal words” of a socialist, it’s not work we want it’s employment. He might be a lot closer to the truth now than he was fifty odd years ago. A word to the Luas drivers, the underground in Lyon is driverless. The shuttle trains in Atlanta airport are driverless, you should be asking your leadership, whither the future for… Read more »
“A Misplaced Grief: The Vatican and David Bowie Fr. George W. Rutler” “..three years ago Bowie produced an adult-rated video impersonating Jesus in pornographic positions. A statement of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Righteous said: “The switch-hitting, bisexual, senior citizen from London has resurfaced, this time playing a Jesus-like character who hangs out in a nightclub dump frequented by priests, cardinals and half-naked women.” But when Bowie died, L’Osservatore Romano, aching to be the Church of What’s Happening Now, eulogized the genius of Bowie, excusing his “ambiguous image” as one of his “excesses” but then remarking his “personal… Read more »
Corybanticism…is that a big word for Rap? Just saying…
I wonder what would have happened to politicians Mr. Gerrry Adams or Mr. Victor Orban had publicly said what David Bowie said about Mr. Hitler, ““His overall objective was very good, and he was a marvellous morale booster. I mean, he was a perfect figurehead.”… Having said that, I really liked “The Space Oddity” album and I still do. And he told his wife, Angie, that he had “never been so damned scared in my life” as when he was in Warsaw (here is the story of his song about Warsaw): http://culture.pl/en/article/how-david-bowie-created-warszawa Mr. Bowie indubitably had some melodic talent, though… Read more »
While I ponder how to respond ‘substantively’ (as the suits say) to David’s article – perhaps I’ll just let it go – I happened to hear the Paxman interview the other day, as part of my ongoing enquiring into the extravert disposition. Bowie came across as very reasonable although there were a couple places where I pricked my ears up (I was reading other things while listening on YouTube: about who he’d had liaisons with and who they in turns had relationships with – what could be termed ‘Rowe’s Law’ holds). I can’t remember if it was in this interview… Read more »
One of the old liberal 60’s hippy doctrines that worked,and there were not too many that worked, and still does, was something my Dad did. He’d have no problem taking us out of school for certain types of travel. He figured we’d learn a hell of a lot more in 2 or 3 weeks by travelling in the not so hot months of April and May to a place like Phoenix or accross the Mojave desert rather than in July and August. We lived in D.C. and would often go for long weekends missing days of school and went to… Read more »
Children can be creative with the rolling stones method “gimmie shelter” I suggest since the number of homeless families went from 400 to 700 in the last 12 months more evidence of the great potemkin Irish recovery;
http://www.rte.ie/news/2015/0920/729079-homelessness/
“Gimmie shelter” door gunner style;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QNlebUDb8U
Geeeeeeeeeeeeetttttttttttt Sssssssssssssooooommmmmeeeee!
Well, “who was endlessly borrowing, customising and innovating.” is nice for rock stars, but let’s not have so much of it with ….. bankers, lawyers, judges, accountants, water purification engineers, road building engineers, food hygiene inspectors, police, military, paediatricians ….. . I remember Bowie, his album covers (to see them in color you had to go to the record store), his weird music, it was a great time. But was it also a great time because I was a teenager, full of uncertainty, melancholy, unrequited lust, and friends who sat around all feeling the same? Sure the music was part… Read more »
I see Bowie is still trending. Surely it should have past the trending at this stage.
The KEY message within this essays deliberation appears to be that it is right for you, especially children, to embrace change and challenge, and to the degree that nothing should be ruled out. But in fact this way of interacting with the world IS the status quo- “But the new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind;… Read more »
Can’t say I was affected too much by any of the perverts lauded as icons. I was too busy earning a living and raising a family.
Most of the so called pop stars of the 80’s onward were/are demented.
We have lost our moral compass.
http://www.theburningplatform.com/2016/01/15/consumer-drowning-sorrows-at-the-bar/
They are not listening to David Bowie
Lies,more lies,dambed lies, and statistics.
We will need all the resilience, innovation and creativity we have as we slide into the belly of the depression beast, head first at that.!!
http://www.gold-eagle.com/article/epocalypse-spreads-its-gaping-jaws-and-smiles
Deco, you’ll love this one:
“Amazon And The Fantastic FANGs——A Bubblicious Breakfast Of Unicorns And Slippery Accounting”
http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/amazon-and-the-fantastic-fangs-a-bubblicious-breakfast-of-unicorns-and-slippery-accounting/
There seems to be a feeling going around that. somehow, if you didn’t like Bowie, then your personality is deformed. Bowieist? It’s like being at junior school.
http://www.deviantart.com/tag/davidbowie
Anyone suggesting that their children use this as an example is in my opinion sick. Bowie was brilliant at taking you for all your money. Lemmings all.
Society using this as a standard is depraved.
Just heard the first part of the Paxman interview again.
Bowie says, ‘I didn’t try to identify myself or try and ask myself who I was. The less questioning I did as to who I was the more comfortable I felt. So now I have absolutely no knowledge of who I am but I’m extremely happy.’
For all his faults he was very articulate. This sounds like a successful strategy for an extravert.
It’s interesting. In a short interview he could have talked about a million things but said this.
Talking of deviant fantasies….
http://deviantinvestor.com/7572/gold-deficits-fantasies/
I disagree, with the entire premise of the article. In fact, it is a load of make believe. Pop music, is the same as soccer. One of two multi-millionaire entertainers. And hundreds of thousands of could have beens. He is not a useful role model. Far from it. A teenager who fails to get the points for Medicine, might make a good nurse, or a good accountant. A failure in a band might make a good taxi driver. Rather than shunning intellectual development (which is what I see in this article), kids should be encouraged to engage in it. The… Read more »
“uneducated is to be fragile”
It all depends on what you mean by educated for example; If a phd physics lecturer lands on a parachute in the amazon jungle near a native tribe who do you think will survive the jungle? Him or the natives?
Random thoughts. Looks like Bowie cashed in his chips just in time to miss the big “crash”. Being a minimalist, I sold one of my shares this morning – early. It’s down 5% since. I don’t know which one of you to thank but thanks. Education and Children, somebody once said should be seen and heard. That is so true it’s sublime. If they are talking they aren’t listening or learning. Education – Some of you come across to me as being real entrepreneurs. While I could never be one I applaud both you and the source of learning that… Read more »
Oh yeah I knew there was something else. Bitcoins rely on encryption if I understand it correctly. There are hackers out there right now testing the quality of that encryption. A very knowledgeable computer software expert once told that the the US (CIA perhaps) would never allow encryption into the public domain that they could not decipher). Something to think about. Explain to me exactly why the value of Bitcoins have increased so much over the last year say? If it is simply because of speculation then what is the point? It means it’s just another form of gold for… Read more »
Meanwhile the gold share I bought before Christmas has jumped in price.
Thank you again guys. Needless to say I have one regret.
Something perhaps David could write a separate article on.
What impact will the debate (never mind the result) the duration of the debate and the opinion polls regarding Brexit have on the UK economy and the Euro zone economies.
This is going to generate a lot of uncertainty.
That Fed interest rate rise was pure wishful thinking.
That’s an opinion most people (except David?) on this site had at the time.
So whither the Fed now?
Belatedly, ie just back from Zombieland – Am I too late to buy more gold shares with the proceeds of this morning’s trade.
Lads, great program on BBC2 now, get on it.
Called “The Town That Took on the Taxman”.
Well worth a replay if you miss it live.
Anti Fragile. ( survival of the fittest) It would be nice if all our kids had Transferable Skills that would make them less vunerable in downturns. To really like what you do for a living is probably the ultimate aim thus never again having to work a day in your life. Im glad that michaelcoughlan has a new career in mental health services. In my oponion this is sadly a growing industry with an OVERWHELMING ATTACHMENT to the our banks/politicians/economists/consumer law enforcers( or NON ENFORCERS)/ central bank and financial ombudsman responses to the grossly overvalued debt sold to Irish Bank… Read more »