Why We Can’t Get Enough of Dan Bilzerian
A reminder of what happens when we stop asking for permission
My awareness of Dan Bilzerian began back in Fall of 2019 starting with a VICE article about a man trying to imitate an outrageous lifestyle. The article was derisory at best but none-the-less, I found myself fascinated by this playboy of a man. It didn’t take me long to get internet acquainted a man whose penchants included guns, making his cat Instagram famous, and bombastic sexual endeavors. But what fascinated me most was our social addiction to this cologne ad of a man.
Of course anything thrown into the spotlight of the public eye is bound to draw it’s fair share of critics, and Dan Bilzerian is no exception. With his internet fame come scathing reviews of his lifestyle. He has been called everything from a fraud to a criminal to a coward. Most of the arguments center around the source of his wealth, with many crediting his father for Dan’s trust fund millions, and the lifestyle he’s promoting, with it being likened to a teenage boy’s wet dream but ultimately immature, impractical, and socially irresponsible. While there is merit to both of these arguments, I think that society’s true fascination revolves around one thing:
How do we as a society balance the psychological juxtaposition between a lifestyle that reminds us we can truly do everything and the reality wherein most of us choose to do nothing. With that, I present to you the theory of social “permission” and the entrenched hold it has on our mindsets.
Every Pauper Wants to Be the King
To first analyze this, we need to examine the life of Dan Bilzerian. Now keep in mind that this is simply a surface-level view on him, and is not to be considered and in-depth psychological approach to him or he society that surrounds him. But lets look at the facts:
In truth, we all want to be like him.
Society and evolution have taught us to seek those with power and influence for protection. Protection from both the physical and social forces that seek to unnerve us everyday brings us peace of mind. In order to quickly assess who is capable of protecting us, we simply look at the environment a person is in. Lavish clothes and furs, strong fortress walls, and massive armies were enough to remind us who has the most power and influence over however much land they rule over. However, these days the threats aren’t so physical.
Today we seek to buttress ourselves against the onslaught of societal opinion. Rapid globalization and advents like social media have made it very easy to see the “have’s” versus the “have nots”. Still, our rudimentary psychological elements come into play and we still assign value to those who have externally appear to have accumulated much, specifically in the areas of free time and leisure. And that’s where Dan Bilzerian fits this mold.
Now you can argue that much of his wealth came from his father. But I contend that much of that does not matter on the surface when you first gaze upon his pictures of him surrounded by multiple girls and guns, and it does not affect the amount of influence that he has. To this day we still are fixated by the likes of the Trumps, the Hiltons, and the Kardashians full well knowing that much of their accumulated wealth was initiated by their immediate parents. As such we seek to align ourselves between the different influences, capitalizing on their power and calling it our own.
We collectively and naturally form cliques and societies very much based on these principles. Take any group of people and you’ll see these relationships and divisions appear within the first two weeks. From there we begin to form hierarchical orders in our minds about who is the “leader” of the group and who is the “omega”. And of course, everyone wants to be around the leader.
Now, from here, and interesting trend begins to emerge. Once one has been deemed an influencer/leader, the rest of the society begins to leverage expectations on him/her. Sometimes these expectations are not entirely rational nor do they fall in line with how they became the leader of the group. Common expectations are transparency, altruism, and restraint. We could go more into depth here but these are the expectations that seem to be hindering Dan’s reputation the most.
The key here is that Bilzerian never claimed to espouse these morals. Which is ironic because once a society begins to levy influence and power upon a person, then they expect them to be an entirely different entity separate from what brought them to power in the first place. We see the same happening with Trump and many of our political leaders and anyone who’s been in a position of leadership over any type of organization, big or small, will tell you that this is one of the first challenges you face if you decide to carry the mantle of leadership. Here’s the thing though, Dan never claims to be a leader of people (besides calling himself the “Bill Gates of Poker”). And that’s where his reputation draws ire.
As a people we always seek to loan leadership and influence to people that we perceive will take us to places that we will never go. That’s why the pictures of Dan on a yacht with a bunch of girls and shooting RPGs in a field is so intoxicating. Many of us will never attain that level of awesomeness. To this, the common public response is, “well now he’s just selling an irresponsible message to young men”. I would argue that the opposite is true.
What Dan embodies is a life lived without permission.
In truth, we all see ourselves as the “Dan” of our own worlds. We’re more likely to see ourselves as awesome or at least capable of awesomeness… if only we had the money. Or the time. Or the rich dad. And that’s where we fall into our own mental traps.
Because too many of us spend our time asking for “permission”.
Think about it. At a young age, in school you were taught that you needed permission to go to the hallway to use the bathroom. Or your parents told you that you needed “permission” to get the candy bar you wanted at the grocery store.
These “permissions” serve us well in growing up and development as they serve as social guideposts for acceptable and unacceptable behavior. But as we get older and develop into adulthood, we forget that there is often no one giving us “permission”. Rarely do we truly fall under the absolute reign of another entity. You can quit your job, you can leave your family, you can drive your car into a lake and while you will suffer the consequences of all of these decisions, there will usually be no one there to ask “permission” for once you make a decision.
The thing is, society realizes that adults still fall under the developmental trait of “permission”. The momentum train is already rolling once you leave school and adolescence. It’s easier on the mind and on society to still erect a façade of “permission” even if none really exists. That’s why your boss gives you things like “two weeks’ notice” and you need to get a driver’s license and you need to have a good credit score to get a loan. We even use it in our relationships and marriages, where we use our spouses as a reason or an excuse as to why we can’t do this or that.
But the real truth of the matter is that there is nothing inhibiting you. You are as free as your mind allows you to be (as Victor Frankl so famously argues). The only thing keeping you back is your mindset and perceived lack of “permission” to do what you want to do.
Ironically enough, there’s actually a word that signifies to us when it is time to remove the chains of “permission” on ourselves and start living the life we actually want to live. There’s an imaginary point that so many people work towards in order to achieve this freedom. They’ll stay in crappy jobs, knowing full well that life is short and death can come at any minute, yet they’ll continue to remain in misery and complain to anyone who will listen about how long it takes to get to this imaginary point.
That word is: Retirement
What Dan reminds of us is the image that we see ourselves as in retirement, just younger and more capable. We see him shooting rockets and having sex with 12 different girls in 8 days and while we don’t exactly agree with what he’s doing, we can help but subliminally agree that it’s awesome that he’s doing whatever in hell he feels like doing (or at least it appears so).
And we sigh wistfully and wring our hands and say, “well, if only I had enough money to travel the world” or “one day when I save up enough, I’ll finally open my own dream business and do what I really want to do when I retire”.
But we miss the fact that the Dan is inside us the entire time. We can make and create and destroy and remake ourselves time and time again. And we look at people who do that awe-fully and yet we wonder why we can’t have that sort of life. It’s because we’re too busy waiting for permission.
So with this, here’s my challenge to you.
There are a couple of hacks you can do to break out of the “permission loop” as I like to call it. They might require money or time or both but I guarantee that you won’t regret it.
1) Buy something you really want. Seriously. There’s a reason why the “treat yo’self” mindset and retail therapy has gone a long way in helping people feel better. I can almost guarantee that in most peoples’ minds, there’s something that they’ve been wanting to buy for the better part of the last six months. They just keep on telling themselves that “they can’t afford it”.
Let me tell you what, most of the items or things that you want fall within your budget.
Don’t be ridiculous or extreme with it, you can’t buy a Lamborghini with a $20,000 income. But maybe you buy that surfboard you’ve been staring at on Amazon and dreaming about for the past few months. Maybe you get that sewing machine that you believe will help you make more facemasks that you can give to your family and friends and co-workers.
Either way, the point here is that you’re not letting your money give you permission to add value to your life, you’re giving yourself permission and using what you have to enable that action.
Then/Or
2) Do something. We spend too much of our lives in a catatonic state between our work and our sleep. Eating junk, watching TV, drinking, all these things serve as distractions to what we deem as the “necessary evils” of life. We work crappy jobs that we hate then come home and spend the rest of that time either maintaining our lives and our relationships and our houses and then spend the remainder of that time numbing ourselves with food and pleasure and alcohol so that we can forget what happened today so that tomorrow we can wake up and do it all over again. If there’s anything that quarantine has taught us, it’s that humans do not naturally lie in a dormant state. Yet that’s what we subject ourselves to every night when we come home from work. So instead, create! Draw a crappy picture (like the one I did above). Write an article (like the one I’m writing right now). Work on a car. Paint. Build some legos or a puzzle. But whatever you do, feel proud and look back on the day and say, “I created or at least worked towards creating something”. And here’s the nice thing, only you get to decide what has value to you. It doesn’t matter if your drawing couldn’t pass the court of social appeal on DeviantArt. If you think it’s beautiful, then that’s all that matters. And learn to recognize and appreciate it and celebrate the beauty that other people have created. And that’s living a life of fulfillment.
The true value of Dan Bilzerian is not in the picture of his amazing house or his yachts or the people that seem irresistibly drawn to his lifestyle. Many who argue that his lifestyle is a toxic influence I would say is missing the larger point.
The point here is that Dan lives the life he wants to with the means at his disposal. The picture painted by the media and the internet is that of a man who doesn’t need “permission” in order to do what he wants to do. If that happens to be shooting a gun or sleeping with a bunch of women, then so be it. Just don’t let his life become a disappointing contrast with your life. Because the larger lesson here is that you don’t need to ask permission to become the most awesome version of yourself right now.