“Who else you got?” a friend asked.

“What do you mean?” I responded.

“What other lessons can you share from dead philosophers?”

“What about Thus Spoke Zarathustra?”

“Who?” he said.

“That is exactly what I said when I first heard it.”

When Michael Santos gave me the book in prison, I didn’t even know who Nietzsche was. And I certainly didn’t know that one of his quotes would become something I’d repeat in every one of the 1,000-plus lectures I’ve given:

“The value of a thing sometimes lies not in what one attains with it, but in what one pays for it, what it costs us.”

At first, I could only manage a few pages at a time. Reread after reread. At one point, I told myself, “I will get this.” Then: “I may never get it, what the hell did I go to USC for?” Then one day: “Wow, cool, fantastic, I am a genius: I finally understand this one paragraph.”

Having Michael to guide me helped. He translated the ideas in a way I could absorb. That’s what I try to do here. Because the language is dense, and when you’re in crisis, clarity matters.

These thinkers are hard to grasp. But their work still lives on centuries later for a reason. I had to find those reasons. Zarathustra is dense, poetic, contradictory, a lot like Montaigne. Nietzsche never meant to be easily understood. But in prison, with time to reflect and fewer distractions, I began to connect with it, even though I often wanted to give up.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

The book opens with Zarathustra, a kind of wandering teacher, returning to society after ten years in solitude in the mountains. He’s been reflecting, discarding old values, trying to find a different way of living. At thirty, he decides it’s time to speak.

By this time in my prison journey, January 2009, or about four months before my release (some days I still cannot believe I write, “before my release”), I had already read Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Zarathustra descending from the mountain reminded me of the prisoner who escapes the cave and sees sunlight for the first time, only to return and be mocked by the people still staring at shadows. In both stories, the teacher doesn’t arrive with answers. He arrives with a warning: if you keep accepting what’s comfortable, you’ll never see what’s true. I wrote about that dynamic when I covered Plato last fall, the danger of mistaking routine for knowledge, of mistaking external approval for inner conviction. That last line came from a book I read in 2008 and copied into my prison journal, which still hangs in my office. I remember exactly where I was when I read it, then wrote it: in my cubicle, eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, drinking a Coca-Cola, after running 10 miles.

Zarathustra’s first realization: Most people don’t want to hear the truth. They want familiarity, routine, and safety. So he stops trying to convert the crowd. Instead, he speaks to the few willing to change. He calls them “companions.”

I told Michael I felt like one of those “companions.” I wasn’t afraid of what was on the other side of truth. I already knew where clinging to my old beliefs had gotten me: standing for count and separated from the fairer gender in prison. I was ready to hear something different.

Zarathustra doesn’t preach dogma. He doesn’t want followers. He wants people to evolve past him. He wants them to struggle and transform, what Nietzsche calls self-overcoming.

The centerpiece of his teaching is the idea of the Overhuman (or Übermensch): someone who doesn’t rely on inherited values, doesn’t fear discomfort, and doesn’t pretend away life’s contradictions. This person creates meaning rather than waiting for someone else to assign it.

That reminded me of Michael. I remember when a group of former U.S. Attorneys and judges were lobbying for a commutation on his behalf. One told him, “I think we have the keys to the prison door. You are coming home.”

When it didn’t happen, Michael just nodded. “Just part of the journey,” he said. “I’m grateful for those who advocated. But nothing stops the work.” Then he ran 20 miles.

That’s what Nietzsche meant.

To become that kind of person, Nietzsche says, the spirit must go through three transformations:

• Camel: The spirit humbles itself and carries heavy burdens. It says yes to hardship.
• Lion: It then rebels. It says no to the values imposed on it. It wants freedom.
• Child: Finally, it becomes a child. Not naive, but creative. Capable of play. Capable of creating something new.

These stages aren’t metaphors. They are requirements. If you want to build something new, you have to first carry, then destroy, and then create.

Nietzsche also introduces a thought experiment called eternal recurrence: what if you had to live your life over and over again, exactly as it is? Every regret. Every mistake. Every day. Would you accept that?

It’s not about fate. It’s about living with such clarity and responsibility that you could affirm your choices, even the painful ones.

That kind of life demands effort. Which brings us to his final core idea: the will to power. The focus is on creation, not control. The drive to improve your life, even when the world feels chaotic.

“What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.”

That quote lived in my head while I was inside. I wasn’t thinking about power over others. I was thinking about the power I have over my own decisions and patterns. How to make something from the ruins I alone created.

In one chapter, Zarathustra warns, “You say the world is full of hard things and terrible things. But the worst of all is that the world is full of those who are satisfied.”

That reminded me of the people I met during my time inside who clung to their past status like a blanket. They weren’t adapting. They were just waiting. Waiting for the next call from a lawyer. Waiting for release. Waiting for vindication. Waiting for someone to restore what had been taken. Nietzsche would call that a refusal to confront reality. A denial of the moment.

That idea echoed something we explored in the Rand newsletter. She warned: “Yes, you can decide to ignore the facts of reality, since you have free will, but the harmful effects of that decision will come back to haunt you later.” That line was written more than a hundred years after Nietzsche, but the warning is the same: refusing truth does not shield you from its consequences. It just delays the response.

Kierkegaard said it another way, and I included this in our newsletter: “The most common form of despair is not being who you are. But worse, perhaps, is knowing who you could be and choosing to look away.”

When I wrote about Montaigne, I talked about watching yourself like a stranger. Observing your thoughts and habits without flinching. Nietzsche doesn’t just ask you to observe. He demands that you decide. And he reminds you that deciding without suffering means nothing (that is so profound, it makes me pause and think, regardless of how many times I read it).

Zarathustra calls it becoming hard. Not cruel. Not indifferent. But forged, like iron.

“You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame. How could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?”

When I read that line, I wrote it down and taped it above my prison locker. Every night I looked at it before going to sleep. It was a reminder that avoiding difficulty was what led me to prison in the first place.

That’s also why Nietzsche is so harsh on pity. Not compassion. Pity. He sees pity as passive. As a way of trapping people in the identity of being broken. He writes, “Pity is the practice of nihilism. It denies life by trying to protect people from it.” To him, the only real respect you can give someone is to expect more from them.

This is why the Übermensch matters. It’s not a symbol of strength in the gym or dominance in a courtroom. It’s someone who builds meaning without needing approval from others. Someone who takes what was lost and does not try to get it back, instead building something new.

For people under investigation or about to be sentenced, that’s not philosophy. That’s your job.

Every stakeholder in your case, judge, probation officer, prosecutor, is watching for signs that you are doing more than just reacting. They’re reading the pre-sentence report. They’re scanning for evidence that you’ve moved beyond the language of regret and into the language of responsibility. Most defendants never get there.

They apologize. They cry. They show up to sentencing and hope their lawyer’s memo will carry the weight.

Zarathustra wouldn’t call that humility. He’d call it self-preservation masquerading as contrition (that line is my favorite in this newsletter!).

“A man’s worth is determined by how much truth he can tolerate.”

That line cuts straight to the point. In prison, you learn quickly who can tolerate the truth. You see it in the men who read every day and journal late at night, even when nobody is asking. You see it in people who volunteer, not because it will reduce their sentence, but because they’re trying to build something useful out of what’s left.

In a previous newsletter, I wrote about Camus and The Stranger, specifically about detachment and clarity. Meursault, the main character, doesn’t pretend to feel what others want from him. In a different way, Nietzsche respected that refusal. He didn’t care whether the world applauded. He cared whether the individual could carry their pain with integrity.

If that sounds severe, it is. But so is the situation many of you are in.

If you are two weeks from sentencing, ask yourself: Have I created anything of value that I can submit? Have I told the truth in writing, not just to the court, but to myself?

If you are three months into a federal investigation, ask: What have I done beyond react? What can I show that doesn’t depend on someone else’s opinion?

And if you are home from prison, still on probation, still explaining what happened, ask: What actions am I taking that would cause someone, who doesn’t know me and doesn’t owe me, to believe that I’m not done?

“The higher we soar, the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.”

Nietzsche wrote for people willing to look directly at what they lost and act differently going forward.

“You say the world is full of hard things and terrible things. But the worst of all is that the world is full of those who are satisfied.”

So do something hard this week. Send the letter you’ve avoided. Admit the detail you skipped. Walk into a room where you aren’t in control. Pick one thing you’ve avoided because it was uncomfortable, something that requires effort, honesty, and no recognition.

Justin