OVERCOME OR BE OVERRUN

On Nietzsche, Hyatt, and Reclaiming the Self from the Mind’s Prison

“I teach you the Übermensch. Man is something that must be overcome. What have you done to surpass him?”

—Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche wasn’t talking about dominance. He wasn’t giving you permission to lord yourself over others. He was issuing a challenge. A warning. And for those who could hear it—an invitation.

The Übermensch isn’t a superhero or a saviour. It’s what comes after man. It’s what emerges when you stop crawling around in the wreckage of inherited morality, victimhood, and stale institutions—and start building yourself from the ground up. It’s not transcendence by escape. It’s transcendence by confrontation. You don’t rise by running. You rise by facing what you are—and burning through it.

Modern life seduces you into stasis. Comfort is weaponised. Guilt is internalised. Freedom is dressed up as choice—while conformity is embedded so deeply, you barely feel the leash. What Nietzsche saw was this: most people don’t want to be free. They want to be safe. They want peace, even if that peace is nothing more than sedation and collapse.

The Übermensch breaks with all of that. He doesn’t retreat into idealism or collapse into instinct. He returns to the body. He acts, adapts, destroys, creates. He makes meaning in the void—not to be liked, not to be saved, but because he must.

That’s the true will to power. Not domination over others—but radical self-overcoming. Becoming what you are beneath the masks.

My mentor, Dr. Christopher Hyatt, in his lighter moments, said: “We don’t want truth—we want illusions.” And he was right. The modern world is built on delusion: slogans, platitudes, fantasies. People say they want to “live authentically,” but then spend their entire lives pretending. Pretending they’re not afraid. Pretending they don’t hate their jobs. Pretending they’re happy living under the rule of guilt and shame.

Hyatt called this out plainly. Most people are not evolving. They’re not ascending. They’re sedated—running outdated scripts on stolen software.

So the question isn’t “How do I become perfect?”

It’s: What lie are you willing to kill today?

Truth is uncomfortable. It breaks the pretty little illusions you’ve spent a lifetime wrapping around your fear. But once those illusions crack—really crack—you start to see the game for what it is. Not just society’s game. Your game. The compulsive roles, the excuses, the moral grandstanding, the inner judge whispering “be good,” while your real self rots in silence.

That inner judge? It has a history.

It began with Plato. In The Republic, Plato sets up the idea of harmony through restraint. Justice, he says, is when every part of the soul plays its proper role—meaning reason rules, desire obeys, and the body is suspect. He builds an empire of the mind by making the body the enemy.

It sounds noble. Rational. Peaceful.

But it’s a trap.

Plato’s philosophy is the prototype for totalitarianism of the soul. He preaches “harmony,” but what he means is control. Suppress the body. Elevate the mind. Sacrifice the individual for the collective. The idea infected Western thought for centuries—right through Christianity, which doubled down on it. God moves from the sky into your head, and suddenly you’re not just punished out there—you’re punished in here. Guilt. Shame. Self-policing. The inner tyrant installed.

And you call it a conscience.

You internalise it so well, you forget it was ever imposed. You follow the rules. You seek approval. You silence your instincts, bury your rage, and numb your desire—because that’s what “good” people do.

But Nietzsche cuts through the fog. He has no patience for ancient philosophy. He rips it all apart, calling it out for what it is—just a head game.

He doesn’t call for you to transcend through thought. He wants you to descend into the body. Into your instincts. Into the real. The body doesn’t lie. It doesn’t negotiate. It knows what’s true.

“Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, there is a mighty lord. It is called Self. It dwells in your body. It is your body.”

The Self isn’t the ego. It’s not your name, your beliefs, your tribe. It’s something older. Something deeper. Something most people never touch.

Reclaiming that Self means breaking the mental prison wide open. It means you stop asking for permission. You stop playing along. You return to the raw. You reclaim your authority.

But be warned: those who do this are often called mad.

Hyatt jokes—half-seriously—that when someone starts to transcend the human condition, society calls it schizophrenia. Why? Because society can’t tell the difference between liberation and lunacy. You stop apologising for existing, and suddenly you’re a “threat.” Not because you’re dangerous—but because you’re free.

And nothing terrifies the collective like real freedom.

So here’s the invitation, if you’re still with me:

Break the spell.

Stop waiting to be saved. You’re the hypnotist and the program. Rewrite the code. Strip out the borrowed scripts and start from zero. That’s where the work begins. Not in the clouds. Not in a book. In your blood. In your breath. In your bones.

How?

• Recognise the prison. Name it. See the walls for what they are—internalised voices, beliefs that aren’t yours, a story you didn’t write.

• Deprogram the mind. Question everything you inherited—especially the moralities you cling to most.

• Return to the body. Live there. Train it. Listen to it. Trust it. It will show you more truth than the news, the church, or your therapist ever could.

• Reject the collective. Be rude if you must. Be dangerous. But be yours.

• Take full responsibility. No saviours. No victims. Own your life. All of it.

• Destroy what doesn’t serve. Build something real in its place.

And above all—accept that there are no guarantees.

That freedom comes with weight. That the price of waking up is never being able to go back.

But once you break out, you’ll never want to.

You’ll finally know: the only way to honour life is to overcome it.

The only way to become who you are is to kill who you were told to be.

The time is now.

The old gods are dead.

What comes next is entirely up to you.