In this answer I talk about the history and status of the idea of the dialectic: Relation of dialectics, as of Hegel and Marx, toward Enlightenment liberalism
In this answer, I argue that a pivotal figure for the transfer of Ancient Greek thought into Christendom, was Boethius with 'On The Consolations of Philosophy', which advocated a kind of 'quietist' Stoic acceptance of political and economic inequality. And the hegemony of that, was profoundly disturbed by the rise of Protestantism, and associated with that, Capitalism: What are the intellectual roots of U.S. happiness and Western Continental Europe suffering?
I argue that each generation must learn it's own lessons from history: that it is a well we go to in order to refresh our understanding of ourselves, rather than a finished text about the past: Do historians have responsibility in how they decide to depict something?
Although there are a few modern Stoics, eg James Stockdale, I suggest your first thesis is better represented in modern discourse by Buddhism. And it's interesting how Zizek is angry about what he percieves as a quietistic tendency or risk of that, towards greed and violence in how Buddhist thought is taking root in the West. Discussed here: Answering Zizek's challenge to Buddhism.
It's easy to misrepresent Nietzsche. The way you've framed it, he sounds like an advocate of the 'spirit of Capitalism'. But I don't think that was his game at all. He advocated dominating the discourse, the creative space. I argue here that his preoccupation was with the mythos of a society and it's role in social cohesion which battles against anomie and nihilism-of-heart: Would Nietzsche approve of the concept of dictatorship? and that he intuited the linking of the intrusion of the communities subconscious drives and needs to the mythologically monstrous here: Nietzsche on balancing service to the creation of (or becoming) the Overman and living a life of ones own choosing?
So, I suggest the synthesis is about going from dime-store Buddhism and a shallow reading of Nietzsche, to recognising that we have a role in shaping who the being is that wants.
"Man can want what he wills, but not will what he wills." -
Schopenhaur
This view oversimplifies. Across a life, we cannot sever ourselves from our history and transplant a new head. But we can cultivate desires, and shape the habits of what seizes us. Nietzsche advocated in his metamorphosees, developing ourselves spuritually, to be self-reliant, and assertive - but above all to return to a childlike creativity:
"Man's maturity: to rediscover the seriousness he had as a child at
play." - Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil
There are better games, than playing who can die with the biggest hoard. Nietzsche wanted art, and music, and dancing and laughter, his Will To Power was more like Socrates listening to his daimon (conscience) in pursuit of eudaimonia, than it is like the 'spirit of Capitalism'. To want what other people say you should want, that is the ethic of the Last Man. To truly listen inwardly, and to be a kind of catalyst for rekindling the fires of passionate fulfilling absorbing lives, that, is the ubermensch.
Mahayana Buddhist philosophy, has a looong history of looking at how we can decide how to be. They hold that the thing that really matters, the only desire that lasts, is bodhicitta. you might teanslate it as Great Compassion, or love for all beings, or being in love with the world. And when we can do that, sustain that, despite all the flaws and selfishness and delusions we encounter, we have a mind ready to face Nietzsche's "heaviest burden": Eternal Recurrance (discussed in detail here What if I get born again as the same person for ever?).
We can remake who wants, but there is a deep contradiction in wanting ourselves to be different, by becoming someone who doesn't want things. In Buddhist thought they point towards the answer to that as 'non dualism'.
"The meaning and purpose of dancing, is the dance." -Alan Watts
We should aim not for quietism, but to dance through life like a child who has not yet been told or accepted, that dancing can only be done in certain ways. Don't do someone elses dance, do your dance.
No longer turned away from ourselves,
we can recognise the greatest gift we have
is remaking who we will have been,
until at last we can let it go,
and leave only joy.
