Building a Bridge to The Overman
by Gary Z. McGee
“I want to teach men the sense of their existence, which is the Overman, the lightning out of the dark cloud man.” ~Nietzsche
What does it mean to become “the lightning out of the dark cloud man”?
It means becoming the personification of a shock and awe campaign. It means striking with white hot inquiry. It means harnessing your integrated shadow like a sword and using that sword like an existential Occam’s Razor slicing through certitude.
More importantly, it means realizing—balls to bones, ovaries to marrow—that everything is connected to everything else and that you alone are responsible for the universe becoming aware of itself.
The lightning out of the dark cloud man is a bridge to the Overman Ethos, inspired by Nietzsche’s philosophy. It involves a transformative process both personally and culturally. Here are seven steps that might guide you on this path.
1.) Confrontation with Nihilism:
“The power of the Void is the power of wombness in us all, the power of true creativity.” ~Peggy Andreas
Objective: Recognize the absence of inherent meaning or values.
Action: Deliberately explore the void where traditional values or gods no longer provide meaning. This isn’t to dwell in despair but to understand the freedom and responsibility it entails. Engage with existential literature, art, or personal meditation on life’s inherent meaninglessness.
When you embrace the void, you turn the tables on meaninglessness and create a platform whereupon you are free to create your own meaning. New meaning. Fresh meaning. Updated meaning. The void becomes a canvas where the art of your life can spill forth, a stage where the drama of your life can play out, a clean slate where your unique story can be authentically told.
Meaning, purpose, and higher values are the flowers that bloom from the mud of the void. It takes going through the underground of the soul, toiling through the muck and mire of the human condition, navigating the Underdark of your primal chaos, to discover loam rich enough to grow your unique meaning and purpose.
2.) Self-Reflection and Overcoming:
“All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.” ~Bruce Lee
Objective: To understand and surpass one’s current self.
Action: Engage in rigorous self-analysis. Identify limitations, fears, and outdated beliefs. Nietzsche’s concept of “self-overcoming” involves transcending these through will, discipline, and creativity. This might involve therapy, philosophy, or personal creativity projects.
Transcend the human condition through healthy nonattachment and achieve a self-actualized state of perpetual self-overcoming. Your nonattachment will keep you elevated above the battlefield of the human condition so that you can freely move in and out of notions of Self.
Self-overcoming becomes a chisel for the hardened beliefs within you. You use it to humble yourself, to destroy your illusions and murder your delusions, to unsettle your settled mind, to shock your chakras, and to recondition your cultural conditioning.
As Camus said, “The greatness of man lies in his decision to be stronger than his condition.”
3.) Creation of Personal Values:
“Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.” ~Mark Twain
Objective: Establish new values that affirm life and growth.
Action: Cultivate values that resonate with life-affirmation, creativity, strength, and joy. This might involve adopting new lifestyles, ethical systems, or artistic expressions that reject passive acceptance of traditional morality and embrace aggressive alignment with cosmic morality.
Question why you hold certain values. Are they yours by choice or by cultural imposition?
Realize that your true value is in your unique imagination. Everything else is moonshine. Your imagination is your potential. It’s your deepest longing to express your own values in the world. This uniqueness is your life’s purpose, your soul’s signature, your unmatched contribution to the human condition.
Live experimentally. Practice becoming over being. Self-interrogate. Self-actualize. Self-overcome. Keep the eight-spoked wheel of virtue (courage, moderation, wisdom, justice, curiosity, honor, humility, and humor) moving forward. Keep your values in sacred alignment with universal laws. Live in harmony with cosmic principles.
The process of revaluation is not a linear progression but a spiraling journey where each step might revisit previous ones with new insights.
4.) Embracing the Dionysian:
“These poor creatures have no idea how blighted and ghostly this so called ‘sanity’ of theirs sounds when the glowing life of a Dionysian reveler thunders past them.” ~Nietzsche
Objective: To integrate both Apollonian (order, beauty) and Dionysian (chaos, ecstasy) aspects of life.
Action: Live life with intensity, embracing both its highs and lows. Celebrate life’s passions, creativity, and even its tragedies. This might mean engaging in music, dance, or other forms of ecstatic expression, balancing order with chaos.
Practice Dionysian disobedience despite Apollonian obsequiousness. Be divergent. Practice Promethean audacity. Dance through the mannequin culture. Thunder past the status quo junkies. Live deliberately. Be a courage-enforcer, a mettle sharpener, a lion-awakener.
The key is courageously delving into the forbidden to discover hidden secrets otherwise unattainable. So as not to remain blinded by the light of outdated culture. So as not to get lost in the abyss of a thousand and one clashing dogmas. So as not to fall victim to the tyranny of reason at the expense of the vitality of imagination.
5.) Cultivating the Will to Power:
“We, half dust, half deity.” ~Lord Byron
Objective: To assert one’s creative force over life’s circumstances.
Action: Practice making decisions and taking actions that expand one’s influence over one’s life. This isn’t about power over others but power over oneself and one’s environment. It might involve leadership roles, pioneering projects, or personal development challenges.
The will to power is the will to self-mastery. It’s a health-based, body-based, earth-based philosophy. It’s going from being merely a self-forging independent force to becoming a self-overcoming force of interdependent fate.
Self-mastery is mastering mortality despite infinity. In the throes of self-mastery everything is a whetstone: pain, setbacks, tragedy, mistakes, loss. The obstacle is the path. Iron sharpens iron. Catharsis begets catharsis. Diamond cuts diamond.
Practicing the will to power is having the ability to use the hardships of life, the setbacks, the slings and arrows, the ups and downs, to make yourself stronger. It’s choosing to live life to the fullest, knowing mistakes will happen; rather than merely existing, fearful of making any mistakes.
Cultivating the will to power is about striving towards personal excellence, creativity, and resilience, not for the sake of power over others, but to master oneself and to live life with passion and purpose.
6.) Balancing the Will to Power with the Will to Humor:
“As soon as you have made a thought, laugh at it.” ~Lao Tzu
Objective: Live in such a way that your sense of humor rivals all other virtues.
Action: To allow the law of levity to supersede the law of gravity. To keep humor ahead of hubris.
The will to humor is the only thing more powerful than the will to power. With this power over power, those practicing the will to humor are compelled to turn their power outward. First as laughter, second as expiation, and third as prestige.
This presents an interesting challenge to the traditional understanding of power dynamics. While the will to power might drive creation, conquest, and personal growth, the will to humor operates in the realms of open-mindedness, resilience, flexibility, and catharsis.
Both can coexist, with humor offering a different kind of strength—one that might not dominate in the same overt ways as traditional power but perhaps influences on a deeper, more pervasive level through laughter, insight, and connection.
Ultimately, while power is about control, humor is about liberation—liberation from the seriousness of life, from oppressive structures, and from one’s own limitations.
Practice humor over hubris. Hang a question mark on all the things you’ve taken too seriously. Set a tripwire for your pride. Dangle a noose over your petty expectations. Take everything with a grain of salt and some things with the entire saltshaker. Have a laugh at the cosmic joke.
7.) Contribution to Cultural Evolution:
“Be extremely subtle even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious even to the point of soundlessness.” ~Sun Tzu
Objective: To influence the broader cultural narrative towards life-affirming values.
Action: Share your insights, creations, and life lessons through art, writing, teaching, or activism. Engage in public discourse, challenge prevailing norms, and inspire others towards their own self-overcoming. This step might involve community building or becoming a cultural figure who embodies these values.
Balance solitude and society. Nietzsche highlights the importance of solitude for self-discovery but also the necessity of returning to society to contribute and influence. Equilibrium is key. Stretch your comfort zone. Seek solitude and adventure. Discover the labyrinth and your very own Hero’s Journey. Just remember to return to the “tribe” and share your magic elixir.
Most important of all: avoid Dogma. Each step should be approached with a caution against creating new dogmas. The Overman Ethos is about continual overcoming, not static achievement.
Building this bridge requires continual engagement with oneself and the world, embracing both destruction and creation. It’s a path of becoming, not arrival, where each step challenges and expands the individual towards a fuller expression of human potential, resonating with the Overman—one who creates their own values, lives passionately, and contributes to the evolution of human culture.
Image source: Final by Stuz0r
About the Author:
Gary Z McGee, a former Navy Intelligence Specialist turned philosopher, is the author of Birthday Suit of God and The Looking Glass Man. His works are inspired by the great philosophers of the ages and his wide-awake view of the modern world.
This article (7 Steps Toward Building a Bridge to The Overman) was originally created and published by Self-inflicted Philosophy and is printed here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Gary Z McGee and self-inflictedphilosophy.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this statement of copyright.
