[Notatheist]

It 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.

[krona]

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.

[seizethecheese]

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