Bioism is the successor philosophy to humanism, our great over-arching religion which has vanquished all others but now lies writhing in the dust strangled by its own inadequacies. Simply put, bioism is the expansion of all that is good in humanism to encompass all of life rather than merely human life.

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Although I composed the essays comprising bioism in prison in my 30s, it’s genesis lay in my studies and readings throughout my 20s, followed by intense personal experiences — an encounter with the law and subsequently life on the run — that closed out my 20s. There can be no better place for composing philosophy than prison with its utter lack of both distraction and responsibility: the ability to chew through concept after concept with a maniacal obsession, to stop on any recalcitrant point and focus one’s mind on it — train one’s guns on it — for hours, or days, or weeks, or months, as the case may be. I may have hated, and did hate, prison every bit as much as society intends one to, but I am afraid that had there been no prison, neither would there be any bioism apart from a nebulous form within my own mind.