When Friedrich Met Your Five-Year Plan

Open Instagram. Scroll for thirty seconds. You'll find at least three Nietzsche quotes superimposed over sunsets, gym selfies, or someone standing on a mountain looking inspirational. "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." "Become who you are." "He who has a why to live can bear almost any how."

Congratulations! You've just encountered the most misunderstood philosopher in pop culture, weaponized for your personal growth journey.

Here's the problem: Friedrich Nietzsche would have absolutely hated your self-optimization routine. Your morning meditation app? Your productivity planner? Your vision board? Your entire "best self" aesthetic? He'd find it all deeply, tragically pathetic.

And before you get defensive, he'd also think I'm pathetic for writing this on a computer while drinking overpriced coffee. Nietzsche had opinions, and he wasn't shy about sharing them.

But here's what makes this fascinating: Nietzsche DID believe in radical self-transformation. He DID think humans should strive to overcome themselves. He DID write extensively about becoming something greater. So how did the philosopher of the Übermensch become the patron saint of LinkedIn hustle culture and Instagram wellness influencers?

The answer reveals everything wrong with how we think about self-improvement today.

The Last Man: A.K.A. Your Comfortable Life

Let's start with Nietzsche's most savage philosophical burn: the Last Man.

In "Thus Spoke Zarathustra," Nietzsche describes the Last Man as the end result of comfortable civilization. This is humanity that has optimized itself into comfortable mediocrity. The Last Man has invented happiness, eliminated risk, and created a society of maximum pleasure and minimum discomfort.

Sound familiar? It should. It's basically describing modern affluent society.

Here's Nietzsche's description:

"'We have invented happiness,' say the last men, and they blink. They have left the regions where it was hard to live, for one needs warmth. One still loves one's neighbor and rubs against him, for one needs warmth... One still works, for work is a form of entertainment. But one is careful lest the entertainment be too harrowing. One no longer becomes poor or rich: both require too much exertion. Who still wants to rule? Who obey? Both require too much exertion."

That blinking? That's the tell. The Last Man betrays himself with that blink, that little tic that says "I know this is bullshit but I'm going to pretend it's fine."

The Last Man has self-optimized himself into oblivion. He's eliminated danger, difficulty, and discomfort. He's achieved work-life balance. He's maximized his efficiency. He's found his tribe. He's living his truth. He's on his journey.

And Nietzsche would say: Congratulations, you've become exactly the kind of withered, diminished human he warned us about.

The Desert Grows: Or, Why Self-Help Is Making You Worse

Here's Nietzsche's diagnosis of what happens when we pursue comfortable self-optimization:

"The desert grows: woe to him who harbors deserts!"

When Nietzsche talks about the desert, he means the internal wasteland that grows when we abandon vital, dangerous, challenging life for comfortable, risk-free existence. The more we optimize for comfort, the more we become deserts ourselves.

Think about modern self-optimization culture. What does it promise?

• Better morning routines (comfort optimization)
• Productivity hacks (efficiency without challenge)
• Mindfulness practices (calmness without confrontation)
• Life balance (avoiding extremes)
• Positive affirmations (pleasant lies we tell ourselves)
• Community and belonging (safety in numbers)

Notice what's missing? Danger. Suffering. Risk. Confrontation with the abyss. Everything difficult.

Self-help culture promises self-improvement without the self-overcoming part. It's Nietzsche for cowards. It's the Übermensch downloaded as a productivity app.

And the kicker? The more popular self-optimization becomes, the more it proves Nietzsche's point about cultural decline. As he wrote:

"Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?"

Our answer? We bought a journal. We started waking up at 5 AM. We optimized our macros. We became our "best selves."

Nietzsche weeps.

What Doesn't Kill You: Misunderstanding the Quote

Let's talk about Nietzsche's most abused quote: "What does not kill me makes me stronger."

In the original German from "Twilight of the Idols": "Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker."

Here's how modern culture interprets it: "Embrace challenges! Every setback is a setup for a comeback! It's all part of your growth journey! #Resilience"

Here's what Nietzsche actually meant: "You need to deliberately seek dangerous, difficult, potentially destructive experiences because comfortable life makes you weak, and only by risking destruction can you become something greater."

Notice the difference?

Modern interpretation: Be resilient when bad things happen to you (passive, defensive, coping).

Nietzsche's intention: Actively seek dangerous experiences that might destroy you (active, aggressive, transformative).

When Nietzsche writes in "The Gay Science":

"For believe me: the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves!"

He means it literally. Not metaphorically. Not "take calculated risks in your career" or "step outside your comfort zone at the yoga retreat." He means actual danger. Actual risk. Actual possibility of destruction.

Your body has to be involved. Your life has to be on the line. Your comfortable existence has to be genuinely threatened.

And here's the uncomfortable truth: You can't do that while reading self-help books on your couch.

The Übermensch: Not Your "Best Self"

Now let's address the elephant in the room: If Nietzsche hated comfortable self-optimization, what about the Übermensch (often translated as Superman or Overman)?

Doesn't the Übermensch represent self-improvement? Isn't Nietzsche telling us to become something greater?

Yes. But not in the way you think.

The Übermensch isn't your "best self." It's not you with better habits, a fitter body, and a more positive mindset. The Übermensch is something that has overcome the human, not optimized it.

From "Thus Spoke Zarathustra":

"Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Übermensch, a rope over an abyss. A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous trembling and halting. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what is lovable in man is that he is an OVER-GOING and a DOWN-GOING."

Notice what Nietzsche emphasizes: danger, abyss, over-going, down-going. This isn't ascending to your higher self. This is risking complete destruction in the attempt to become something entirely different.

The Übermensch creates new values. The self-optimizer achieves existing values more efficiently.

The Übermensch destroys comfortable certainties. The self-optimizer builds comfortable routines.

The Übermensch says "God is dead, and we must become gods ourselves." The self-optimizer says "Let me check my values worksheet."

You see the problem?

Become Who You Are: The Most Misunderstood Command

"Become who you are" might be Nietzsche's second-most quoted phrase, right after the resilience thing.

It shows up in every self-help book, every personal development seminar, every coaching program. It's been thoroughly domesticated into "discover your authentic self" or "live your truth" or "find your passion."

But here's what Nietzsche actually wrote in "Ecce Homo":

"How one becomes what one is."

The title of that section isn't a gentle suggestion to discover your inner child. It's a description of Nietzsche's own brutal process of self-creation through suffering, isolation, illness, and radical honesty.

For Nietzsche, becoming who you are means:

1. Destroying who you think you are
2. Confronting everything you've been taught to value
3. Creating yourself through acts of will
4. Accepting complete responsibility for your existence
5. Living beyond good and evil
6. Enduring profound isolation
7. Risking madness

Your vision board is not on this list.

Nietzsche's process of becoming who he was involved chronic illness, social isolation, academic rejection, financial poverty, and eventual insanity. He didn't become himself by journaling his gratitudes and doing morning affirmations.

When modern self-help coopts "become who you are," it strips out everything difficult. It becomes permission to do whatever feels authentic, which usually means whatever feels comfortable.

Nietzsche would call this exactly what the Last Man does: seeking comfort while calling it authenticity.

The Return to Monkey: Giving Up on Overcoming

There's a fascinating meme that perfectly captures the other side of this coin: "return to monkey."

The meme says: Humanity has failed. We can't solve our problems. Technology has made us miserable. Modern life is alienating. So fuck it, let's just return to simpler, more "natural" existence. Return to monkey. Reject modernity, embrace tradition. Whatever slogan captures the same sentiment.

Nietzsche saw this coming too. That "dangerous looking-back" he mentions? That's the temptation to retreat to simpler, more animal existence. To give up on the project of overcoming humanity.

And he's saying: that's pathetic too.

You can't go back. The only way forward is through. The rope is stretched over an abyss, and you can't climb back to the animal side. You either move forward toward the Übermensch or you fall into the abyss.

The Last Man won't move forward (too dangerous). The "return to monkey" crowd wants to move backward (impossible). Both are refusing the actual challenge: to overcome yourself despite the danger and discomfort.

We could neither overcome intercultural differences, nor end religious wars, nor stop climate change. So we're tempted to give up entirely. To retreat. To return to simplicity.

But Nietzsche would say: that's just another form of the Last Man. Just with different aesthetic choices.

Heavy Reading vs. Light Consumption

Here's an uncomfortable question: When was the last time you actually read Nietzsche?

Not a quote on Instagram. Not a summary on YouTube. Not a podcast episode about him. Actually sat down with "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" or "Beyond Good and Evil" and did the hard work of reading?

Nietzsche's work is not easy. "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" is deliberately written as philosophy-poetry that requires slow, difficult reading. "Beyond Good and Evil" demands you question every comfortable moral assumption you have. "On the Genealogy of Morals" asks you to trace where your values came from and realize they're not as noble as you thought.

This isn't content you consume while scrolling on your phone. This isn't material you can digest in a motivational post. This requires what Nietzsche called "rumination," like a cow chewing cud. You have to read slowly, return to passages multiple times, let ideas ferment.

But we've optimized that away too. Now we want:

• 7-minute philosophy explainers
• Nietzsche quotes on Instagram
• Podcast summaries
• Key takeaways
• Actionable insights

We've turned Nietzsche into content. Digestible. Comfortable. Optimized for quick consumption.

Which is exactly what the Last Man would do.

We've switched from heavy reading to light consumption. Away from the classics and toward the self-help books. Away from difficulty and toward digestibility.

And Nietzsche would say we're becoming deserts in the process.

The AI Problem: Peak Last Man

Here's a fun experiment I ran: I asked an AI to write about "Nietzsche and self-optimization."

Here's what it generated:

"Today, society is riding the exciting wave of progress and apparent improvement. If we want to find something better in ourselves, we just have to look for it and develop it. This is what Nietzsche meant by his famous slogan 'Become who you are.'"

Read that again. It's perfectly bland. Perfectly inoffensive. Perfectly meaningless. It could be from any self-help book, any motivational speaker, any corporate training seminar.

It's optimized language. It's designed to offend no one and inspire everyone. It's perfectly Last Man.

And if we're letting AI generate our philosophy, we've already lost. We've already become the Last Man. We've already withered into comfortable desert.

The machine has overtaken us not because it's smarter, but because we've made ourselves dumber. We've optimized ourselves into beings that can be replaced by algorithms generating motivational platitudes.

Nietzsche saw mass culture creating Last Men. He couldn't have imagined we'd automate the process.

This is just one of many current examples of what awaits us when the machine has overtaken us. We could still learn to keep up, but to do so we would have to switch our stomachs back to heavy reading fare.

So What Are You?

Here's the question that matters: Who are you? And what do you want to be?

Are you the Last Man, comfortable and optimized, blinking at your own bullshit?

Are you trying to "return to monkey," giving up on the challenge of overcoming?

Or are you actually willing to risk destruction to become something greater?

Most of us (definitely including me) are Last Men who like to imagine we're on the path to the Übermensch. We read Nietzsche, we feel inspired, we buy the t-shirt, and then we go back to our comfortable, optimized lives.

We're not willing to actually live dangerously. We're not willing to actually risk destruction. We're not willing to actually confront the abyss.

We just want to feel inspired while scrolling Instagram.

And you know what? Nietzsche would say that's exactly what he expected. Cultural decline means most people can't even imagine what he's talking about anymore. The Last Man has won. The desert has grown. The wasteland is here.

But here's the thing: Nietzsche kept writing anyway. Despite chronic illness, despite poverty, despite isolation, despite knowing that his work might not be understood for generations, he kept writing.

Not because he had a morning routine. Not because he had a productivity system. Not because he was optimizing himself.

Because he had no choice. Because he had to. Because becoming who he was required it.

That's not self-optimization. That's self-overcoming. And there's a massive difference.

That is still up to you. We've even tried to capture this question humorously with our latest designs. What is certain, however, is that you and I are not Übermenschen. We couldn't be further from that. That's not even just my opinion. I fully share Nietzsche's cultural pessimism.

The Uncomfortable Truth

Look, I'm not going to pretend I'm some Nietzschean hero writing this from my mountain cave while wrestling bears. I'm drinking coffee and typing on a computer and I'll probably scroll Instagram later.

We're all Last Men to some degree. That's the reality of comfortable modern life.

But maybe, just maybe, we can at least be honest about it. We can stop pretending that our morning routines and productivity apps and vision boards are Nietzschean self-overcoming. We can stop posting his quotes over sunsets and pretending we understand what he meant.

We can admit that actual Nietzschean transformation would require abandoning most of what makes our lives comfortable. It would require risks we're not willing to take. It would require suffering we're actively trying to avoid.

And if we're not willing to do that? Fine. But let's not pretend we're becoming the Übermensch. Let's not misquote Nietzsche to justify our comfortable self-optimization.

Let's just admit we're Last Men, we're blinking, and we've made our peace with the desert.

At least that would be honest.

And Nietzsche, despite everything, valued honesty above almost anything else.