In this raw, no-holds-barred episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone Collins dissect how Abraham Maslow repackaged Nietzsche’s Übermensch (Übermensch) into the modern, feel-good concept of “self-actualization” at the top of his Hierarchy of Needs—turning a call for radical self-ownership and moral creation into an elitist, therapy-gated path of perpetual vague self-improvement, peak experiences, and manic-pixie-dream-girl aesthetics.

We explore why the original Übermensch demands you build your own moral framework (independent of society, culture, or ancestors), reject herd morality, and embrace responsibility—while Maslow’s version lets the wealthy progressive elite pat themselves on the back without real introspection. Bonus rants on: the pyramid of sin (Maslow’s hierarchy normalizing indulgence), why strong-willed people are the true “inclusive” ones, Star Wars force analogies gone wrong, and why self-ownership beats self-acceptance every time.

If you’ve ever felt gaslit by positive psychology, therapy culture, or the urban monoculture—this episode is for you. Check out our book The Pragmatist’s Guide to Life (free ebook + audiobook for subscribers) for tools to build your own value system.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] He basically tried to combine the Uber minch with the aesthetics of the manic pixie dream girl.

oh, I like to listen to the songs in my head. I’m sorry, I paid the cab driver in buttons.

When did you first suspect you were dating a manic, pixie dream girl? On her first date and. She said she wanted pancakes for dinner, but I felt alive. But then after a few months, and she can’t feed herself, she can’t pay bills.

She just wonders at the marvel. Every moment, we got married in a bouncy castle.

Do you think it’s possible to ever be truly. In the moment, the Native Americans believe everything is alive.. I told him the best place to see.

The night sky is laying in the middle of the street. It’s the flattest place there. She does seem happy. Happy as she can be, I suppose.

Malcolm Collins: Maslow flips this. Self-actualization is achievable through [00:01:00] education, therapy, supportive environments and personal effort. Not a heroic struggle alone. . So no.

What is actually said here, it’s saying, the Uber minch is elitist because to become an Uber minch, an individual has to overcome suffering.. Who has the potential to be self-actualize if self-actualization requires the fulfillment of all of the lower states of the hierarchy of needs?

Only the elite

and the fun thing about Laslo system. It is a system that makes everyone who is wealthy and sees a therapist think that they’re already at the top of it, and it explains to the rich progressive, who doesn’t want to think about why the poor have different world frameworks than them.

Mm-hmm. It helps them not think about it.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna be [00:02:00] talking about the links between the Uber Minch as developed and defined by niche and the rebranding of the term self-actualization into its modern definition, which was done by Abraham Maslow of Maslow Hierarchy of Needs Face.

And you’re

Simone Collins: referring, you’re referring to Nietzsche. He’s just gonna call him Niche. Go with it guys.

Malcolm Collins: It, I don’t, Frederick Niet words have no place on this American tongue. Okay. They, they would dirty my mouth. Anyway, we have another episode. If you want to understand how Maslow rebranded the term self-actualization and how his rebranding was so toxic and largely destroyed the field of psychology and is the seedbed of the urban monoculture.

That is not what we’re gonna be focusing on in this episode. What we’re gonna be focusing on in this episode is, Maslow was pretty explicit in this, in some of his works. Self-actualization was a rebranding, an [00:03:00] explicit rebranding of the concept of the Uber Mitch, but it was rebranded to be palatable to a broadly progressive urban monoculture cultural perspective.

And through the rebranding, in a way, it became an inversion of itself. I think he thought he was just making little tweaks to it and not realizing that he was actually retooling the core of what it meant. Now, broadly speaking, I’m gonna go over what these two mean. And then we’re gonna go over how they contrast with each other in understanding and what we as individuals can take away from this contrast to understand how we can live meaningful lives.

Simone Collins: it is so crazy. Can you imagine when they first introduced this to you, like in your college psychology class, they’re like, oh, yeah, like there’s high Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and at the top it’s, it’s basically nietzche iss, [00:04:00] Uber mench. But let’s not talk about that. I’m not gonna, no, let’s not talk about that.

Malcolm Collins: The good thing about Nietzsche’s Uber mech, one of, one of the best things that contrast it was a hierarchy of needs and, and self-actualization is that the definition when you boil it down is actually pretty clear. And it’s, it’s, it’s not like vague, just a bunch of positive things.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: You are an Uber minch if.

You do not get your morality from your culture.

Simone Collins: Oh, so you’re not like, okay,

Malcolm Collins: society. Yeah. If you pick up what you think is right and wrong, because other people told you this is what’s right, and this is what’s wrong, you are not an Uber Mitch.

Simone Collins: Okay?

Malcolm Collins: If you develop what is right versus wrong, because you personally sat down and saw it through.

Now, it’s not saying that you reject morality or you embrace nihilism. It’s actually a specific [00:05:00] refutation of that.

Figuring things out for yourself is the only freedom anyone really has. Use that freedom. Make up your own mind.

Malcolm Collins: There is a way to say society is wrong or society isn’t necessarily right. As we’d see in the pragmatist guide to life, we do not live at the moral nexus of history. Yeah. You cannot assume that just because you, there’s a, a moral understanding today, and this is true of all people in the past.

Wherever you look in the past, there is going to be. Something that they did that today, we consider Absolutely Mortifyingly. Amoral.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And there are gonna be things that we do today that people in the future might find mortifyingly, amoral, like

Simone Collins: eat meat. That’s the most common conclusion.

Malcolm Collins: But that’s the, that’s the easy one I can think of, right.

Especially once lab grown meat is really easy to do. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Future people are gonna be like, how were you able to swallow that? Whereas we see bacon cooking and we’re like, Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: So yeah. So I, I, I, and, and people can be like, well, no, morality [00:06:00] moves in like one direction. And I’m like, okay, well suppose you are of this progressive mindset and you think that there have been periods in history where, you know, I go to, let’s say.

A slave owner in the south or something like that, right? Mm-hmm. And I point to earlier periods of European history where like same sex relationships were more acceptable. And they’re like, well, those people were clearly evil. Look, society is always moving towards progress. And yet today, the things that had been normalized in the slave owning South but were less normalized during that period, but more normalized during earlier parts of European history.

And note, I’m not saying here that same-sex relationships were ever totally normalized. Like the, the them being totally normalized in Rome or Greece is just inaccurate. But there were forms of same-sex relationships that were more normalized than during height of slave. That, that they would say like, okay, well then maybe it goes in like a wave or something.

It’s like, no, you just need to, there are going to be things that are normal today that people in the future are gonna find mortifying. [00:07:00] So niche says you have a. Responsibility to not just accept morality, which is, I think interesting in that it goes against a lot of modern rightist philosophy. And that a lot of modern rightist philosophy says learn from your ancestors, embrace your culture.

Mm-hmm. Where Nietzsche says, no, learn from and evolve that culture into something better. That is,

Simone Collins: yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Okay.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It’s important to start with because I think a lot of people get the Uber mi wrong. They think it’s some weird racial hierarchy something or I, I do not know what they think it is. They, they, I think they think it’s like a genetically engineered person.

I sort of see this, this or, or the height of like German blood perfection and it’s like, no, that, that never had anything to do with it. That

Simone Collins: would, if I broadly. Were to model the leftist commentators that I constantly listen to online. I think what they would vaguely conjure in their minds is a [00:08:00] proto edge Lord.

And that is what an Uber mench is. And there’s no such thing as someone who’s actually like advan...