29. Afterword: Nietzsche, Sex, Power.

In this special wrap-up episode, I take you back through the journey of The Will to Joy’s first season—what we explored, what we uncovered, and how far this project has already evolved. From the human condition in all its frustration and striving, to the three-part exposition of will to power, this episode closes one chapter and opens the next.

I also look ahead to what’s coming:

– the future of the podcast

– the launch of my forthcoming book Nietzsche. Sex. Power. A Manifesto of Ascending Life (2026)

– and the direction this entire movement is heading

We'll reflect on the new ideas that have emerged in the process—my interpretation of will to power, the “economy of bodies” we all inhabit, and our practical, evolutionary approach to Nietzsche that you won’t find anywhere else.

I speak openly about the reality of creating this work: leaving my job, burning my bridges, and committing fully to this project—and how you can play a part in bringing the next phase to life by joining me as a De Profundis member.

To close, I offer a compact but incisive exercise drawn from Nietzsche’s idea of “giving style” to one’s character—an uncompromising method for discovering the values you actually live by, beyond your self-image or good intentions.

If you’ve followed this season, you’re here at the beginning of something. Consider this your invitation to continue the ascent.

Transcript

“Not where you come from shall constitute your honour from now on, but instead where you are going.” — Zarathustra

Welcome, listeners.

This is an extra to close the first series. The main season ended with the three-part exploration of the will to power. Today I want to do four things:

1. Look back briefly on series one — to take stock of where we are and how far we’ve come.
2. Look forward to the book I’m releasing in 2026: Nietzsche. Sex. Power. A Manifesto for Ascending Life.
3. Say a few words about the future of The Will to Joy podcast.
4. Leave you with a simple, revealing practice to help you understand yourself better as a prelude to willed change.

Before that: my thanks to recent patrons — Michael Page, Ivan, Materialmind, Michael, Jack, William Mark Thompson, and Jason Nash. You’re the reason this project exists.

Why this podcast — why now

I’ve been working on this for years. It was time to put something into the world.

I began without a rigid plan. I wanted to explore Nietzsche’s philosophy through the human condition: desire, aspiration, frustration; self-doubt and self-sabotage; shame, guilt, pathological self-consciousness; and that everyday nihilism expressed in the question: what does my existence amount to?

I’ve touched on a lot of this, but there is still far more to say. In many ways, this first series has only been an introduction to Nietzsche’s strange world. A stretching of the limbs. When I started, I didn’t know exactly where I wanted the journey to go, but my confidence grew with each episode. By the time we reached the three-part finale on the will to power, I was certain of the material. I think it’s a strong conclusion.

Much of what I’ve shared goes beyond standard interpretations. The will-to-power theory I presented is my own — and I stand by it. Likewise, the work on the economy of bodies, which I delivered at the Nietzsche conference in September: culture, beauty, sex — themes fundamental to human life, but oddly neglected in Nietzsche studies.

Of course, I stand on the shoulders of others. In particular, I should credit T. K. Seung — the originator of the idea of Nietzschean consciousness in its cosmic and heroic forms (his “Faustian” and “Spinozan” perspectives). His Epic of the Soul (2006) advanced that idea first.

But the practical and actionable angle — that’s the gap I’m trying to fill. Academics don’t do this; the personal growth world generally lacks the depth of Nietzsche scholarship needed for it. That’s where this project lives.

Because I’ve only made this material public this year, you’re here at the beginning. An early adopter.

Over ten months, my ideas have evolved and sharpened. I’ve been feeling my way forward. Perhaps you noticed the shifts — including the name change.

I don’t think there’s another podcast quite like Will to Joy. I’ve looked. But I’m more interested in what you think. Do you want a season two? Are there topics you’d like covered? Perhaps an ad hoc Q&A? You can message the show directly from the episode description, or reach me on X, Instagram, or Facebook.

Patreon will be a major focus in the coming winter — and the book. So let me turn to that.

The Book — 

Nietzsche. Sex. Power.

(Working title)

I’ve been writing for eight years. I once thought I could fit everything into one book — technically I could, but it would require brutal compression and heavy assumptions about readers’ grounding. It’s bigger than that, because the subject is bigger: it addresses the most consequential human concerns.

The first book — arriving early 2026 — now has its skeleton. Nietzsche. Sex. Power. A Manifesto for Ascending Life.More than a manual for self-mastery, it’s a radical manifesto for a new spiritual orientation in a disenchanted age.

If you heard Episode 24, An Economy of Bodies, you’ll have some sense of the direction, though the book is broader, deeper, more practical, more ambitious.

It’s a book about the marriage of aesthetics and power — the true basis of valuation. As Nietzsche writes in Zarathustra, in “The Tarantulas”: struggle, inequality, and war for supremacy live even within beauty.

Here’s the broad shape:

Fusing Nietzsche’s philosophy with evolutionary psychology and behavioural science, the book offers a provocative alternative to the moralistic, therapeutic, productivity-obsessed world of contemporary self-help. It confronts the quiet misery of modernity: a disenchanted cosmos, flattened values, and instincts treated as indecent or pathological.

It challenges the illusions of altruism, equality, and free will — not to shock, but to clear the ground for dignity, power, and joy.

At the centre is the will to power, not as domination but as the fundamental principle of becoming: the drive to grow, overcome, and intensify. This force expresses itself in two primal drives: Eros (attraction, sensuality, reproduction) and Animus (competition, aggression, the urge to prevail). Polite society disavows them, but they structure civilisation, shape hierarchies, and define life chances. Properly understood, they become engines of transformation.

This is not a book about coping or healing — it is a book about transcending. About giving your life artistic form. About reclaiming aesthetic values: beauty, strength, intensity, joy. About making suffering sacred.

It culminates with a confrontation with Nietzsche’s guiding spirit, Dionysus: the god of ecstasy, terror, transformation. To meet him is to meet the abyss — and to change.

Interest in Nietzsche has never faded, but today it is deeper, wider, hungrier. The time is right for a more consequential interpretation. This is that interpretation.

Who is it for? Intellectual dissidents, apolitical revolutionaries, spiritual contrarians, firebrand freethinkers, vitalists, biophiliacs — anyone seeking a path grounded in lived experience rather than dogma. Men and women who find mainstream personal growth too sentimental, too shallow, too terrified of the real drivers of human flourishing. Anyone suffocated by the vacuity of early twenty-first-century consumerist humanism.

Chapter Outline (Brief)

Introduction: Eros and Animus

Modern nihilism, amor fati, and Nietzsche as a psychologist of transformation.

1. The Appraising Animal

Humans as valuing beings; beauty as a power-trait; “rausch” as the feeling-tone of life ascending.

2. The Evolution of Intoxication

Aesthetic taste, sexual selection, the biological roots of life-ascending values.

3. An Economy of Bodies

The hidden market of power-traits underlying relationships and social life.

4. A Different Kind of Invisible Hand

Scarcity, volatility, manipulation; predators and strategy.

5. The World as it Oughtn’t to Be

A genealogical challenge to altruism; the emotional reality of love affirmed as life-enhancing.

6. The One True Superpower: Confidence

Self-valuation, the instability of social evaluations, the paradox of self-worth. How confidence becomes a meta power-trait that can override all others.

7. On Self-Overcoming

Nietzsche’s drive psychology; training, ritual, integration.

8. The Social Straitjacket

Domestication, sublimation, repression, and the shaping force of civilisation.

9. Herd

Civilisation as a super-organism; conformity as its tool; the role of cultural “mutants”.

10. Because We Must!

Radical individuality, the bellwether archetype, and the inner locus of authority.

11. Spirituality Without Spirits

A Dionysian spirituality of necessity, joy, and affirmation.

What the reader learns

The book strips life back to the fundamentals: body, instincts, drives. It shows how Eros and Animus shape confidence, ambition, relationships, self-image, and purpose. Instead of denying these forces, you learn to harness them.

You learn why beauty hits like a drug; why status matters; why you compare yourself; how your instincts can be trained and redirected. You see the hidden economy of bodies — the ranking, signalling, jostling — and instead of being trapped by it, you gain freedom from it.

You see how civilisation has boxed you in, and how to reverse the conditioning without blowing up your life. You learn how rare individuals emerge and become forces in their own right.

Across the chapters, you get a toolkit:

• audit your own power-traits
• read others accurately
• cultivate genuine confidence
• stop outsourcing your self-worth
• reshape habits and drives through self-overcoming
• build an internal authority immune to social fluctuations
• use suffering as fuel rather than fate
• move from reactive to active life

The practical result: someone who commands respect without seeking it; who grows from adversity; who lives with appetite, intensity, and affirmation; who treats existence as sacred; who feels their life as significant and real.

Where I’m going — and where you might go

I’m looking for people who want to be part of this project: experimenters, adventurers, iconoclasts. Stay connected through the usual channels.

If you want to help bring this work fully into the world, join as a De Profundis member on Patreon: patreon.com/willtojoy.

Two years ago, I quit my job to pursue this full-time. I’ve burned the boats. As Nietzsche writes in The Gay Science, in “The Horizon of the Infinite”: we have left the land, broken the bridge behind us, and now feel the terror and splendour of the ocean’s infinity. That’s where this project lives.

I’ve burned through most of my savings. But I’m not stopping. This work is happening, one way or another. You can help make it real — and I intend to make it worth your while:

• detailed Nietzschean practices
• early access to techniques from Nietzsche. Sex. Power.
• audio diaries of my own experiments
• early drafts and excerpts
• the names of 2025 supporters printed in the book

If you can’t support materially, that’s fine — you can still help by liking, sharing, reviewing, subscribing, or sending messages.

A Practical Exercise: 

Real Values

Nietzsche writes in GS 290 on “giving style” to one’s character — gathering strengths and weaknesses into an artistic whole through long practice and daily effort.

This exercise shows the gap between what you claim to value and what your behaviour reveals you actually value.

Part 1 — Declare Your Values (10 minutes)

Write down five values you believe define you. Rank them. Explain briefly why you think you hold them.

Part 2 — Observe Your Behaviour for Seven Days

Each day, note:

• where your time went
• what you avoided
• what sparked enthusiasm or dread
• where your money went
• whom you deferred to
• what you pursued when unobserved

Pay attention to inner dialogue — especially highs and lows: pride, fulfilment, shame, compromise. At the end, extract patterns. These are your expressed values.

Part 3 — Identify Your Real Values

From the patterns, list the five values your behaviour implies (e.g., comfort, security, approval, dominance, stimulation). Rank them based on evidence alone.

Part 4 — Compare the Lists

Lay them side by side. Ask:

• Which stated values appear nowhere in your actions?
• Which revealed values never made the “noble” list?
• Where do priorities flip?
• What hidden value do you secretly serve?

Most people discover that convenience beats health, approval beats honesty, entertainment beats learning.

Part 5 — Final Analysis

Write one paragraph:

• What values do you pretend to have?
• What values do you actually operate by?
• What forces are truly driving you?

Are your stated values genuine, aspirational, inherited, or culturally conditioned? Don’t moralise — just state the behavioural facts.

Your behaviour is your philosophy. A week of observation reveals more than your self-image ever will.

Nietzsche writes in BGE 41: One must test oneself — the most dangerous game — and the test is taken before oneself alone.

With that, The Will to Joy takes its bow for now. I wish you strength in your own ascent, wherever it leads. And perhaps, one clear morning, on the steep slopes of a formidable mountain, our paths will cross — both of us striving, both of us making progress.