Nietzsche's superman can seem like an atavism. Who would still take such a cranky, remote, inhumane exaltation project seriously today? Who is not shuddered at the proclamation that they want to raise humanity to a new, self-transcending level? In Germany in particular, we have had more than enough bad experiences with exaggerated and unrealistic ideas that had very realistic, terrible consequences. The superman belonged to the National Socialists, racial delusions and biological beliefs. Bad enough that Nietzsche could also serve as a keyword for these apostles of coming glory. That's behind us.

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I. Beyond us

But do we have that? If you leaf through the advice literature of these days, even more contemporary: if you click through the more recent Moneymaking videos on YouTube, a lot of things seem strangely familiar to the Nietzsche reader. “The fastest route to success is to accept that you with your current sense of self and your current identity and how you perceive yourself and how the world presents itself to you through your lens and your paradigm, you're not capable of bringing about the future, that you want to bring about. [...] We don't achieve goals, we achieve characters. We achieve identities”¹, says Charlie Morgan, one of the most famous influencers and young multi-millionaires, who reveal the secrets of wealth to their audience on social media. “It was uncomfortable, it was out of my comfort zone, but it made me grow; and I think it's human nature to want to grow.”², preaches Alexander Müller, co-founder and owner of Greator, the most influential stage for speakers and coaches in Germany with over 800,000 YouTube subscribers alone, and can use these words to touch on Zarathustrian wisdom: “Life wants to climb and to overcome oneself.”³. “Go into your vision, even though it's going to hurt sometimes. But in the end, you'll have grown for your next step. Towards a happier, more successful and more fulfilling life”⁴, Müller adds great promises.

Expanding oneself not as part of a more comprehensive educational process, as an accompanying experience of meaningful, socially relevant activity with numerous challenges, and not as self-abandonment and self-transgression towards others in the sense of Christian charity. No, growing beyond oneself as a pure end in itself, as a source of meaning par excellence, as a principle and meta-program, as a supreme authority setting sub-goals, simply as a Zarathustrian life principle. We no longer find this radical core assumption in politics. But she has made it into the entrepreneurial milieu of the 2020s and is shaping an entire generation of entrepreneurs in a new, modern guise with spiritual flair.

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II. The Molting of Superman

That external success is a reflection of the state of internal development is observed as one of the basic axioms on the scene. It therefore only seems consistent that a lack of economic success is reliable proof of internal backwardness. “The company is the mirror of the entrepreneurial personality. Both can only develop together. As your business grows, you have two options. Either you grow with it and you succeed. Or your company grows over your head and you sink. ”⁵ That would be bad, of course. But don't worry! With the offers from the speaker and coaching scene, you will transform yourself, create depth of soul, intense happiness and self-chosen sense and — by the way, as an inevitable by-product — wealth. By the way, the latter does not mean anything internal, but rather quite profane: things, status symbols, comfort and money. A spirit without goodwill could assume that the latter is still the real impetus for many people's “inner search.” But even these require more than simply learning skill sets and diligent practice to achieve their goals. Yes, even more than an organic transformation.

Commitment to transformation itself is necessary. Because everyone has come as far as their current personality allows them to. Everyone gets what they deserve, could also be formulated. But can the true entrepreneur ever find his end, his port, his final form somewhere? No, because its essence lies in changing nature, in constantly rejecting an old ego in favor of a new, more capable version. “You must commit psychological suicide. You, the person you are right now, is not capable of this, because if you were, you would have it.”⁶ The old self must perish because it was too weak to get more from the world than it got. No luck, no salvation, no money.

It is not the dreams of owning a home or of a legacy that drives the protagonists of this ideology, as was at least proclaimed by previous generations of the bourgeoisie, but the innermost self becomes the object of processing, of struggle, and becomes a center of passion for one's own fate. The self-transcending, constantly sinking, sending, pushing ego, which affirms suicide in this sense, affirms doom, affirms life as the growth of one from the other, the dying — what is this other than the superman who demands of himself: “You must want to burn yourself in your own flame: How did you want to become new if you didn't become ashes first are. ”⁷

May we put forward the daring thesis: There is no need to talk about the superman anymore because he has long since realized himself? Realises only in a small class, but it is precisely in the class that embodies the greatest creative, reality-forming potential. Because what is not systemically outsourced to technical, legal, institutional structures and entities, what innovative power is actually given to individual people, who else could find this more concentrated than with entrepreneurs?

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III. Contemporary adventurers

No one is as prominent about wanting to fail, adventurism, trying out and playing as the caste of entrepreneurs. And no one is as uncaught in organizational structures and mechanisms, in the machinery of large corporations and political enterprises as they are. Nowhere else is so much tried out, dared, lost and won as there: “As entrepreneurs, we make bets everyday. We are Gamblers — gambling our hard-earned money on labor, inventory, rent, marketing, etc., all with the hopes of a higher pay out. Oftentimes, we lose. But sometimes, we win and win BIG. ”⁸ Nietzsche's superman also dares to do anything and risks perish when the demolition company rolls in the dust everything that appears outdated and outdated, and yet his gaze is always focused on what can be rebuilt: “[M] ag everything that breaks our truths — can! Many houses are still to be built! ”⁹ Yes, the higher the bet, the bigger and more noble the company, the act: “That is the dedication of the greatest, that it is risk and a game of dice for death” (ibid.)

Nothing is more highly valued in the startup scene than the balancing act of courage, commitment and composure. The real player takes high risks, “gives everything” to win — and walks off the field laughing when he realizes that he has lost. This is how you outline the ideal entrepreneur; Zarathustra wishes the new person with such “individuality”: “[W] he of you can laugh and be uplifted at the same time? Anyone who climbs the highest mountains laughs at all grief games and grief seriousness. Courageous, carefree, mocking, violent — that is what wisdom wants us: she is a woman and only ever loves a man of war. ”¹⁰

The goal becomes a mere means for the entrepreneur, an almost arbitrary setting that basically only serves to achieve a specific lifestyle, namely that of constantly being overly aware of oneself. The personal “mission,” which is often enough talked about in manager seminars, does not have to be either world peace or the “prosperity of nations,” which the thought leaders of capitalism such as Immanuel Kant and Adam Smith dreamed of, but can be consciously postulated and believed as just a temporary vehicle for personal transformation and top performance. You get involved in how you get involved in a game of chess. You have to take the desire to win seriously. But regardless of whether you get up as a winner or a loser in the end, you shouldn't have taken the game seriously. The board is cleared, the pieces are rebuilt, a new round, just as serious, just as inserious.

It may be said that this is accompanied by an almost superhuman experience of autonomy. Principles are established, one's own actions are rigorously guided by them, as if they were chiseled on tablets of law and dictated by heaven, the main thing is that one's own self has made them law: “Free from what? What does Zarathustra hide! Bright but let your eye tell me: free What for? Can you give yourself your evil and good and hang your will on yourself like a law! Can you be yourself a judge and an avenger of your law? ”¹¹ These laws only apply to the Nietzschean superman as well as to the entrepreneur as long as they push the ego to its limits and beyond them. Once a plateau has been reached — and yes, that certainly means a financial plateau for the latter — it is time to break the old rock lumps. They just constrict and need to be replaced with updated engravings that require a new look. An ego that will unlock a higher dollar-per-month level.

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IV. Combat companions instead of morale

Regardless of how many continuing education courses on “ethical business” the protagonists of the start-up scene may attend, morality remains a clearly external, foreign element, as can be easily assumed. It is true that your own product should always “solve a problem” and could therefore be called “good” in the Aristotelian sense. But the spectrum of “problems” that the clever businessman is preparing to solve ranges from the need for new technologies for heart valves to faster, cashless payment processing to “needs” for pornographic material. The limits of what is feasible are set by law, not by morality. It is true that many young entrepreneurs would undoubtedly not trade weapons, slaves or drugs if the legal framework were more relaxed, but this personal moral restriction is hardly one that receives any significant support from the persuasion system of their ideology.

The doctrine of superman could also be regarded as moraline-free. Although the old morality with its life-denying ideals should be overcome, where it should go remains largely undetermined. What the person who strives for the new ideal suffers from is not the suffering of injustice or evil in the world, no it is the disgust at the smallness of the person “that their best is so small! That their worst is so small! ”¹² The superman should be “loyal to Earth”¹³ Stay, do not devalue pleasure, it can even upgrade selfishness, domination and anything else that has been under negative signs so far. And the overall project also revolves around revaluation: “Appreciating is creating, hear it, creators! Valuing itself is the treasure and gem of all valued things. It is only through appreciation that value exists: and without appreciation, the nut of existence would be hollow. Hear it, you creators! ”¹⁴. But who is better suited to giving things their value, their price, than the capitalist, the stock market player, the young entrepreneur? Prices are not determined by thing, world or nature, remember that “nature is always worthless”¹⁵, but the value is put into nature by people, you could also say that it is invented.

Similarly, in view of the abstract demands of morality, compassion in the entrepreneurial milieu retreats to a reduced modus operandi. One of the central, infinitely iterated mantras is that individuals resemble the people with whom they spend the most time: “Being successful is very easy. What if I told you that you have the key right in front of your eyes? Yes, literally! Just take a closer look at your surroundings: Who do you live with? Who are you working with? Is your environment full of positive energy? Who do you spend your free time with? ”¹⁶

Like the superman, the entrepreneur has to look for those who are children of the same spirit. Anyone who gallops along the same path from transformation to transformation can be friend and brother, because then you can recognize each other, can fertilize and inspire yourself, can lighten yourself up in the dark hours of doubt, but even more: can encourage the other person to do greater, greater actions. Friendship means seeing the potential slumbering in the other person and awakening it together with him. That's when you grow together, each with their own adventure, and yet with a strong, friendly hand and voice close by. What you want are “companions [...] who follow me because they want to follow themselves — and wherever I want. [...] The creator is looking for companions and not corpses, nor for hosts and believers. The creator is looking for the collaborators, the ones who write new values on new boards”¹⁷.

And what about those who don't see it that way? The companies of the past, those who are not convinced of the same ideology of making money through spiritual awakening? Who perhaps embody different ways of life and value something else? And who expect something more from friendship than cheering each other on while sprinting on the hamster wheel? Well, here too, you should pass by, not with resentment, but murmuring a blessing and in freedom. But under no circumstances should you chain yourself to these people. They've left them behind. What are their concerns and advice now, perhaps even their empty remarks that they have transformed themselves into a superficial self-optimization machine? What do they already know? Basically, they're weak. And you shouldn't be a doctor or a crutch for the weak. They won't thank you for it. Don't chain yourself to the lame, leave them behind, surround yourself with people at your “level”, i.e. in the entrepreneurial milieu: with as identical a worldview as possible.

Who has ever swum through Zarathustra's lines would not see the Master's last lesson, namely to renounce compassion?¹⁸ It is important not to be a teacher to those who are too weak to internalize and embody the teachings of the superman, but to go on alone and make them serious with the intent: “And if you don't teach me how to fly, teach me — Fall faster! —”¹⁹

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V. “Price is what you pay, value is what you get”²⁰ (Warren Buffett)

But we can assume that most of the young entrepreneurs, even the coaches, consultants and speakers, have never read Nietzsche and have heard little more than the word “superman.” How can it be that so many of their beliefs and phrases seem to correspond exactly to the Zarathustrian ideal? Has his concept found a secret path into the collective subconscious and sought out its own niche, “its” people, to whom it can talk? To repeat the question from the beginning, is there hardly any talk of superman anymore because he has realized himself?

At the same time, however, one must hesitate to see Nietzsche's dreams realized when looking at the preachers of the money through happiness message. Is that the elite he was hoping for? A community of money-hungry fortune seekers? From the stage, highly paid speakers bark their promises of salvation in the best spotlight. On Fuckup Nights, entrepreneurs laugh about their worst failed attempts, their worst bankruptcies. In fitness centers, friends yell motivating truths to each other. If you can make it here, you can do it anywhere.

Is Zarathustra, the herald of the superman, not himself — contrary to his own self-confession — far too much of a philosopher to be satisfied with such meager materialism? And doesn't superman as an idea have a completely different spiritual core than simply surpassing himself? We don't just want to say succinctly that excessive ownership is regarded as an ankle bracelet by the proclaimer of the Superman and that the ideal of money appears frowned upon from the outset: “— truly not to a nobility that you could buy like the grocers and with grocer gold: because everything that has a price has little value”²¹, but above all stress that the Appreciate There is a completely different salary, as well as the The meaning of the earth It is by no means to be understood materialistically. New values should be created because the previous ones have proven to be nihilistic. The ideals of Christianity hostile to the senses and the body are outdated because the thesis of God has become implausible, but the people who revealed God as an invention and projection have retained the old values in an inferior, mediocre version. Now that there is no longer a God who can still be credible, where earthly life is everything, people try to make life comfortable, safe and healthy. The Zarathustrian ideal opposes this comfort, lack of idealism and diminution of the idea of humanity. Even the values of entrepreneurs are certainly not one of frugality, so you could even confuse them with the Zarathustrian ideal, if you only want to recognize in this the “above and beyond” just the simple self-law. Nonetheless, “Always on” and “Always more of the same” has a nihilistic core. Where everything is given a number value, the unequal is made equal. Money is accumulated without the players being able to say what that money is good for. You can still “bet” and “gamble it away”, simply spending it in a lifetime would be a challenge. Without an answer to the question of how the world should be shaped, creative power can only yearn for “more” that cripples all other areas of life.²² People need new values and aspirations that they can believe in, so they need an answer to the question “Why? ”. In a secular age, only humans can answer this question. But can he do this as an individual, is the superman even an individual? This is a complex question. The superman is often seen as an egomaniac who, in complete self-importance, takes the place that God previously held. No morality, no superordinate law, can dictate to him anymore. Is there an internal law?

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VI. The cannibals of capitalism

If we come back to the motivation that brings Zarathustra, the herald of the superman, to people, we see a motive that we should definitely not ignore. When Zarathustra is advised not to go to people; they would not listen to him, would not understand him, might even be dangerous to him, Zarathustra replies: “I love people. ”²³

Although much of a person may seem like pure self-empowerment in favor of a richer, mentally richer ego, one should not ignore the fact that Zarathustra wants to bring people a gift. Only if you ignore this can the words, mantras and aphorisms in the vibrant scene of the young entrepreneurs sound strikingly similar to the virtues of superman. The destruction of traditional ego, the growth of anew as a principle, the fresh daring, the playful spirit that engages but also releases itself again, which drafts its own laws in the highest autonomy without morality that serve him, not those it serves itself. The superman, who never gets stuck in fixed forms, just as he doesn't hold onto loved ones where he has outgrown them. He who, where evil happens to him, without resentment of life or people, affirms every difficulty as a challenge, as an opportunity to grow, as a springboard for the next level. Who feels thankful. Who, in the end, enjoys without shame and guilt, because he knows that there is no God and no judgment waiting for him.

And yet, on closer inspection, you have to realize that Nietzsche is misunderstood even where he is not quoted. The superman is not explicitly mentioned in the vanguard of the young capitalists. But many pieces of their ideology are taken from the intellectual inventory of Nietzsche's philosophy. But only in a reduced, adapted, deformed version. The true and only goal of today's economy — little has changed since Marx — remains capital accumulation. She likes to wear new, contemporary garments over and over again, invent new fashions and incorporate cultural trends and integrate all sorts of different vocabulary, but her essence always remains the same. And their subjects, the executants of their mechanisms, adapt their own inner life to the requirements of the system at any price for the best possible usability — from their point of view for “success”.

Nietzsche's superman, however, has another promise. An idea of humanity and human development that has dispelled the grievances and misunderstandings of a multi-entangled spiritual tradition and is able to start its own, ungodly future with freedom. In order to explore this, however, it might be a good idea to talk about Superman again.

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literature

Beck, Tobias: Unbox your life! Resident-free: The secret to your success. Offenbach 2018. 7th edition 2022.

Hormozi, Alex: $100M offerte. How To Make Offers So Good, People Feel Stupid Saying No. Ebook, Aquisition.com 2021.

Meerath, Stefan: The path to becoming a successful entrepreneur. How you and your company gain new momentum. Offenbach 2008. 21st edition 2021.

Morgan, Charlie: I told myself I was rich until it came true. Online: https://youtu.be/IUxn7vT104Y (published on 19.03.2023, retrieved on 26.5.2024).

Müller, Alexander: It's In You. Visions, success, fulfilled life. Ebook, Munich 2024.

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footnotes

1: Morgan, I told myself I was rich until it came true, minute 21:16 & 22:14. Translation: “The fastest way to success is to accept that with your current self-image and your current identity and how you perceive yourself and how the world presents itself to you through your lenses and your paradigmthat you are unable to bring about the future that you want to bring about. [...] We don't achieve goals, we make personalities happen. We create identities. ”

2: Miller, It's In You, position 198.

3: So Zarathustra spoke, Of the tarantulas.

4: Miller, It's In You, position 215.

5: Meerath, The path to becoming a successful entrepreneur, P. 59.

6: Morgan, I told myself I was rich until it came true, minute 20:58. Translation: “You must commit psychological suicide. You, the person you are now, is unable to do that, because if it were you, you would already have it. ”

7: So Zarathustra spoke, From the creator's path.

8: Hormozi, $100M Offers, p. 11. Translation: “As entrepreneurs, we make bets every day. We're players — we bet our hard-earned money on manpower, inventory, rent, marketing, etc., all in the hope that it will pay off. Losing often. But sometimes we win and win A LOT. ”

9: So Zarathustra spoke, About overcoming yourself.

10: So Zarathustra spoke, About reading and writing.

11: So Zarathustra spoke, From the creator's path.

12: So Zarathustra spoke, From the old and new tables, 2.

13: So Zarathustra spoke, Preface, 3.

14: So Zarathustra spoke, Of a thousand and one goals.

15: The happy science, Aph 301.

16: Beck, Unbox your life!, position 102.

17: So Zarathustra spoke, Preface, 9.

18: Cf. So Zarathustra spoke, The sign.

19: So Zarathustra spoke, From old and new boards, 20th

20: Translation: “Price is what you pay; value is what you get. ”

21: So Zarathustra spoke, From old and new boards, 12.

22: Cf. So Zarathustra spoke, Of redemption.

23: So Zarathustra spoke, Preface, 2.