Michael: Alright Kevin, before we dive in, give me your honest, one-sentence impression of Friedrich Nietzsche. Kevin: Oh, that's easy. The official philosopher of angsty teenagers, angry gym bros, and guys who wear leather jackets indoors. And he had that magnificent, world-ending mustache. Michael: The mustache is undeniable! And you're not wrong about the stereotypes, which is exactly why we're tackling his most famous work today: Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None by Friedrich Nietzsche. Kevin: A Book for All and None. Even the subtitle is trying to be difficult. Michael: Exactly! And what's wild is that Nietzsche himself thought this was his magnum opus, a gift to humanity. He said the core ideas came to him in a flash of inspiration while hiking in the Swiss Alps. He felt it was less written and more... revealed. Kevin: Okay, so he wasn't just sitting in a dusty office. He was getting philosophical downloads on a mountain. That's a bit more epic. I'm slightly more interested now. Michael: It is epic. And the first thing this mountain-inspired prophet wants to tell us is a pretty brutal diagnosis of humanity. He comes down from his ten years of solitude, ready to share his wisdom, and he finds... well, us.

Kevin: And I'm guessing he's not impressed with what he sees. Michael: Not even a little. He walks into a marketplace, sees the crowd, and he tries to give them this grand, new vision for humanity. He calls it the "Übermensch," or the "Overman." He says, "I teach you the overman. Human being is something that must be overcome." He’s basically saying, "You are all just a bridge to something greater, not the final destination." Kevin: How does that go over with the crowd? I can't imagine they're thrilled to be called a "bridge." Michael: They laugh at him. They think he's a circus act. They completely miss the point. And in response, Zarathustra gives them the alternative. He says, if you don't strive to be the Overman, you will become the "Last Man." And his description of the Last Man, written in the 1880s, is one of the most chillingly modern things you'll ever read. Kevin: Okay, lay it on me. What is the Last Man? Michael: The Last Man is the ultimate creature of comfort. He wants no risk, no struggle, no great love, no great contempt. He just wants to be warm and comfortable. Zarathustra says the Last Man has a little poison for pleasant dreams and a lot of poison for a pleasant death. They work a little, they play a little. And here’s the killer line: Zarathustra says, “‘We invented happiness’ – say the last human beings, blinking.” Kevin: Wow. That is… terrifyingly familiar. It's the Netflix-and-chill version of existence. The person whose greatest ambition for the weekend is to find a new series to binge. All comfort, no greatness. Is that what he saw coming? Michael: He absolutely saw it coming. This hollowing out of ambition, this collective failure of desire. He saw a world where "God is dead"—not that he was celebrating it, but observing that the grand, unifying story of religion was losing its power. And he was terrified that in its place, we wouldn't create new, grander values. We'd just settle for this "bovine version of happiness," as he calls it. Just blinking. Kevin: That "blinking" detail is so good. It’s not an angry defiance, it’s just… passive, vacant contentment. Michael: Precisely. And to illustrate just how badly his message is received, and how dangerous the path away from the Last Man is, Nietzsche gives us this incredible, tragic parable right at the beginning of the book: the story of the tightrope walker. Kevin: A parable? Okay, I'm ready. Michael: So, as Zarathustra is trying to preach, the crowd is actually gathered to see a tightrope walker. This performer starts his act, walking on a rope stretched high above the marketplace. He represents humanity, on this dangerous, precarious journey between animal and Overman. He's taking a risk, striving for something. Kevin: Right, he's the opposite of the blinking Last Man. He's actually doing something difficult. Michael: Exactly. But then, a jester—a chaotic, mocking figure—appears on the rope behind him. The jester taunts him, then leaps right over him. The tightrope walker is startled, loses his balance, and plummets to the ground. He lands, broken, right at Zarathustra's feet. Kevin: Oh man. So his first attempt to teach humanity ends in total disaster and a dead acrobat. That's not a great start for a prophet. Michael: It's a catastrophic failure! And it's intentional. Nietzsche is showing us a few things. First, the crowd doesn't care about Zarathustra's deep philosophy; they just want a spectacle. Second, the path of self-overcoming is incredibly dangerous. And third, you can't just "overleap" humanity, as the jester does. It leads to destruction. Zarathustra comforts the dying man, telling him his soul will die even before his body and there's no devil or hell to fear. Then he picks up the corpse to bury it himself, completely rejected by the town. Kevin: So the message is: this is not going to be easy. And your ideas will be misunderstood, maybe even dangerously so. It’s interesting how that mirrors the book's own reception. You mentioned it was polarizing. Michael: Extremely. Some critics at the time, and even now, have called it "unreadable," a "gorgeous disaster." They find the poetic, prophetic style to be frustrating. And yet, it became Nietzsche's most popular work. During World War I, German soldiers were given 150,000 copies of a special wartime edition to carry with them. Kevin: Whoa, hold on. German soldiers in WWI were reading Zarathustra in the trenches? That seems... like a massive misinterpretation of a guy preaching about overcoming yourself, not the enemy. Michael: It's one of the great tragedies of Nietzsche's legacy. His ideas, especially the "Overman" and the "Will to Power," were ripped out of their complex, philosophical context and twisted by nationalists and, later, the Nazis, to support ideologies he would have despised. He was against nationalism, against anti-semitism. But his concepts were just powerful enough, and just ambiguous enough, to be weaponized. It’s like the jester in the story—a malicious misinterpretation that leads to real-world horror. Kevin: That makes the story of the tightrope walker even darker. It’s a prophecy of how his own ideas would be treated. Okay, so you can't just leap to being an 'Overman.' It's a dangerous crossing. So how do you actually walk the rope? What's the first step if you don't want to be the Last Man?

Michael: That is the central question. And Nietzsche's answer is one of the most beautiful and powerful metaphors in all of philosophy. He calls it the "Three Metamorphoses of the Spirit." He says the spirit must first become a camel, then the camel a lion, and the lion, finally, a child. Kevin: Camel, lion, child. Okay, that sounds like a very strange fable. Break that down for me. What on earth is the camel stage? Michael: The camel is the weight-bearing spirit. It kneels down and asks, "What is heavy?" It wants to take on the hardest tasks, the heaviest burdens. This is the spirit of duty, of reverence. The camel carries the values of society, of its parents, of its religion, into the desert. It's the good student who does all the homework, the dutiful employee who follows all the rules, the person who accepts the "thou shalts" of the world without question. Kevin: I think most of us feel like Camels, right? Loaded down with student debt, job expectations, what our parents want... We're carrying all this weight and trudging through the desert of our twenties and thirties. I know that feeling very well. Michael: We all do. It's a necessary stage of learning and discipline. But you can't stay a camel forever. In the loneliest desert, the second metamorphosis occurs: the camel becomes a lion. Kevin: A lion. Okay, I like the sound of that. What does the lion do? Michael: The lion's purpose is to fight the great dragon. And on every scale of this dragon is written a golden "Thou Shalt." "Thou Shalt honor thy parents," "Thou Shalt pay your taxes," "Thou Shalt believe in this god." The dragon represents all the external values and commands that have been imposed for thousands of years. The camel says "I must," but the lion says "I will." The lion's sacred duty is to say "No." It doesn't create new values yet, but it fights to create the freedom for new creation. It slays the dragon of "Thou Shalt" to win its own sovereignty. Kevin: That sounds liberating but also terrifying. To say "No" to everything you've been taught, to every expectation... that's a lonely and aggressive act. You'd lose friends, maybe your family, your job. You become a destroyer. Michael: You do. The lion is a fearsome, solitary figure. But that destruction is necessary. You have to clear the ground before you can build something new. But even the lion cannot create new values. For that, a final transformation is needed. The lion must become a child. Kevin: A child? Why a child? That feels like a step backward from a powerful lion. Michael: It's the most important step. Think about a child at play. A child is innocence and forgetting. A new beginning. A sacred "Yes." The child doesn't operate on "thou shalt" or even on the lion's defiant "I will." The child just creates. It builds its own world, its own games, its own rules, out of a pure, joyful, affirmative will. The child is the one who can finally create new values, not in reaction to the old world, but from a place of pure, creative energy. The child is the true Overman in spirit. Kevin: Wow. So it's a journey from accepting all rules, to rejecting all rules, to finally creating your own. That's a profound psychological roadmap. But that last step... becoming the Child... how do you even get there? It sounds almost impossible. Like you have to unlearn your entire life. Michael: It might be. And that's why Nietzsche's subtitle is "A Book for All and None." The path is theoretically open to everyone. He's laid it out for all to see. But he suspects almost no one will have the courage to complete the journey. It's too hard, too lonely. The comfort of being a camel, or even the angry pride of being a lion, is easier than the radical innocence of the child. Kevin: So the Overman isn't a destination you arrive at, like a promotion. It's this constant process of becoming... of being willing to transform from one state to another, over and over. Michael: That's it exactly. It's not a static goal. It's a process of self-overcoming. Nietzsche has Zarathustra say, "And this secret life itself spoke to me: ‘Behold,’ it said, ‘I am that which must always overcome itself.’" Life isn't about arriving; it's about constantly transcending who you were a moment ago.

Kevin: So when you put it all together... Nietzsche isn't just being an edgelord, writing provocative things for shock value. He's seeing this massive spiritual crisis on the horizon—this "death of God"—and he's terrified we'll just settle for blinking comfort, for being the Last Man. Michael: Exactly. He's not giving us a comfortable answer. He's giving us a terrifying, beautiful challenge. He's not saying "here are the new rules." He's saying, "You must become strong enough to create your own." The whole book is a poetic, sometimes confusing, but always passionate plea not to settle. He says, 'Human being is something that must be overcome.' Kevin: It’s a call to arms for the soul. And the path he lays out—from Camel to Lion to Child—isn't a simple 3-step self-help guide. It's a description of a life-long, painful, and profound struggle. Michael: It is. It's a call to a harder, more dangerous, but ultimately more meaningful life. It's about finding the courage to bear your burdens, the strength to fight for your freedom, and finally, the innocence to create your own joy and your own meaning in a world that offers none ready-made. Kevin: And that feels more relevant today than ever. In a world of endless distraction and curated comfort, the temptation to just be the Last Man, to just blink, is overwhelming. Michael: It is. And it leaves us with a really powerful question to reflect on: In your own life, right now, are you the Camel, the Lion, or the Child? Kevin: That's a heavy one. We'd love to hear what you think. Find us on our socials and let us know which stage resonates with you. It’s a fascinating way to think about where you are on your own journey. Michael: This is Aibrary, signing off.