23. Wrestling with the Spirit of Gravity

Recorded on the rugged trails of the Lake District, with a stupidly heavy pack, sore knees, and a wild Nietzschean esprit!

In this episode, I yomp alone through across 40 miles of peaks and silence, sleeping out, drinking from streams, and thinking deeply about beauty, power, shame, and the weight we carry—both physically and psychologically.

Topics include:

– The brutality and exhilaration of hiking peak-to-peak solo

– Extracts from my upcoming paper: An Economy of Bodies — a Nietzschean genealogy of sex, beauty, and culture

– Wild camping, solitude, thirst, and suffering as spiritual practices

– Nietzsche’s “Spirit of Gravity”: what drags us down—prudence, shame, herd morality—and how to achieve escape velocity

– Naked dancing under the crescent moon, and the politics of “cringe”

– Why true confidence means an internal locus of authority

This is not a travel diary. It’s a philosophical field recording. Wind rumbling the mic, scrambling on stone, a fire crackling in a remote bothy—and the sound of one man wrestling with the joyless forces of anti-life.