alt Hacker NewsIt has been a while since I read Nietzsche but what exactly does trekking off into the unknown or even certain death have to do with nihilism? Maybe active nihilism but even that would be a stretch, not to mention it would make the penguin inspiring rather than depressing.
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seizethecheese • yesterday at 9:44 PM
Yeah, this is using nihilism in the colloquial sense that is closer to a synonym of “aimless” or maybe “doomed”. The penguin can’t possibly be a nihilist except for in the sense that all animals are nihilists
This is Nietzsche’s will to power in its most unforgiving form.
The will to power is not mere survival or dominance over others; at its apex it is the drive to impose one’s own meaning on existence, even when that meaning is written in self-destruction.
It is like Empedocles and the volcano.
Empedocles does not leap to escape mortality; he leaps to overreach it, to force the cosmos to acknowledge his claim, even if the price is erasure.
The penguin would rather perish as itself than endure as something lesser.