“But why?”
This is the question acclaimed filmmaker Werner Herzog and the rest of the internet seem to be asking after the “nihilist penguin” went viral recently.
The nihilist penguin is based on the 2007 Herzog documentary “Encounters at the End of the World.” The documentary is a study of the animals and the people who study them at an American research center on the southern tip of Antarctica’s Ross Island, McMurdo Station.
The section of the documentary that went viral pertained to an Adelie penguin colony where a penguin became disoriented and headed for the mountains, abandoning the colony.
“One of them caught our eye, the one in the center,” Herzog says as he narrates the documentary. “He would neither go toward the feeding grounds at the edge of the ice, nor return to the colony. Shortly afterward, we saw him heading straight for the mountains, some 70 kilometers away. Doctor Ainslie explained even if he caught him and brought him back to the colony, he would immediately head right back for the mountains. But, why?”
This penguin blew up with many finding the penguin to be a symbol of hope and adventure, or, according to others, on a suicide mission.
Clips went viral of people recreating the meme or turning it into various edits.
The White House even posted a photo of the nihilist penguin carrying an American flag walking hand in hand with President Donald Trump into the mountains with a flag of Greenland. Homeland Security also reposted a video implying that Americans know the answer to this, but why?
But why do I hate it?
Simply because it’s not that deep.
First off, I take offense to the term “nihilist penguin.” The nihilist penguin is not even a nihilist. The term, as defined by Merriam-Webster, means “a viewpoint that traditional values and beliefs are unfounded, and that existence is senseless and useless.”
So, with that definition in mind, wouldn’t the penguin reject society by laying down in the snow waiting for the cold hands of death? But no, instead the penguin runs towards the mountain in search of something.
If anything, the nihilist penguin is a Faustian, aka someone who “makes or does something for present gain without regard for future cost or consequences.” He runs towards the mountain, abandoning the ocean and his colony that provides him with survival, for the sake of some fleeting whim.
Even attaching some sort of philosophical ideology to this penguin is incredibly unnecessary, considering the video is about a penguin that lost its mind and is heading towards inevitable death.
Instead, people project their own feelings of desperation onto the penguin. As one X user says, “If this penguin doesn’t penetrate your psyche so deeply that you are compelled to finally drop everything & chase your dreams, then you’re doomed forever bro.”
Well bro, I’m not affected by this penguin because I have a sense of responsibility and an understanding of the natural world.
Herzog’s documentaries often tackle the idea that the natural world often doesn’t fit in the structures that our society likes to adopt. Sometimes things just happen. They may be bizarre and unfortunate, but the world is odd and unexplainable. Yet we watch the nihilist penguin through a human lens that projects meaning onto something that has none.
According to the Sustainability Directory, avian disorientation is “the impairment of a bird’s natural ability to navigate or determine its correct flight direction…the consequence is often deviation from established migration routes.” It’s a natural part of the world, but it’s sad, so it makes people uncomfortable. Uncomfortable things make people search for reasons when there aren’t any.
The penguin getting disoriented and running into the mountains is odd and unexplainable, but the world is odd and explainable. We don’t know why the penguin ran to the mountains, and probably, neither did the penguin.
Overall, people are projecting their own anxieties about the state of their lives, and this desire to escape their responsibilities onto this penguin. The penguin isn’t headed towards some further destiny by abandoning everything it knew, and neither are you if you do “side quests” instead of your work.
Confusion is unsatisfying, and people project answers on the penguin to feel adequate. When the penguin is framed to be plotting rather than confused, it becomes inspiring because intention is powerful in contrast to randomness. The added captions, music and commentary work well because it stabilizes the clip into having meaning. The penguin is no longer wandering or disoriented; it’s leaving for bigger and better things. The nihilist penguin doesn’t capture indifference; it allows people’s complicated feelings to look like a choice
You are not the nihilist penguin, and you will never be the nihilist penguin. You are just stressed out from mounting assignments and putting your sad little feelings onto this little creature.
Go out and learn to cope instead of putting it all on this poor penguin.
