Nietzsche’s description in "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" is a perfect parody of late 20th-century jogging-and-dieting North America. Health has replaced both heaven and ethics. Athletics is the new form of asceticism. Positive thinking is valued more than reflection and meditation. The human experience, with its rich, tragic, and ironic complexities, has been reduced to the gleam of physical well-being. And if a person exercises and eats healthy, they are promised to gain knowledge and self-mastery, thus feeling fulfilled.
"One has one's little day pleasures and one's little night pleasures," Nietzsche remarked. "But one is always concerned about health. 'We have invented happiness,' say the last men, winking."
