Bio-Inertialism: On Motion and Survival

I have always been infatuated with philosophy. Being able to speak about historical events, philosophical doctrines and their influence in the world is a passion of mine. I do not care to recite the names of each Greek philosopher or the differences between Kant and Nietzsche, but rather explain how they influenced and shaped the world around them. I want to know which philosophical debate prevented a war? Which maxim redraw our maps? What common book have those we consider dictators read? These questions always lurked in mind. Yet, when asked who my favorite philosopher is, I always struggle to connect. Do I hedonistically believe in love? Does nihilism explain who I am? Or perhaps stoicism summarizes who I would like to be.

So, in an attempt to discover myself, I read about as many ideologies I could; only to discover that I am not in full agreement with any of them. Why? Because most philosophies begin too late.

They begin at the moment of choice, at the crossroads where a person is said to decide who they are, what they believe, or how they will act. They begin with morality, with ethics, with power, with responsibility. They assume a self already formed, already standing still long enough to be evaluated. But life does not pause to be judged, and existence does not wait for us to understand it. I wanted an ideology that could I explain why we act the way we do even long before we have a choice.

There is no true autobiography. There is only a story we tell ourselves after motion has already occurred.

We cannot know, fully or honestly, why we are where we are. Not because the past is hidden, but because causality extends beyond perception. Every decision is the product of conditions we did not choose, forces we did not name, and sequences we only recognize in hindsight. To narrate a life as if it were authored consciously is to mistake continuation for intention. In my eyes, autobiographies are work of fiction aimed to narrate and rationalize the protagonist’s agency in life.

Bio-Inertialism was born from that dissatisfaction. From the realization that most philosophies mistake narration for causation, and agency for origin. They argue about what should be done while ignoring what made doing possible at all.

Instead of asking whether an action is moral, Bio-Inertialism asks what conditions allowed the action to emerge. Instead of asking who is responsible, it asks what forces were already in motion long before responsibility was assigned.

At its core, Bio-Inertialism begins with a simple but unsettling observation: nothing is ever inactive.

We use the word inertia casually, often to imply laziness or stagnation. Yet in its original sense, inertia describes a body’s persistence in motion or rest unless acted upon. What we forget is that nothing is ever free from influence. A rock resting on the ground is held there by gravity. Time acts upon it, weather acts upon it, pressure acts upon it. A loaf of bread left untouched will decay. Not because it failed, but because time is not neutral. To exist is to be acted upon.

There is no inert state. There is only motion so slow, or so familiar, that we mistake it for stillness.

This is where the “bio” in Bio-Inertialism asserts itself. Living systems do not move because they choose to. They move because survival precedes choice. Before thought, before emotion, before morality, there is continuation. From the moment of conception, life expresses itself as resistance to cessation. Survival is not noble, ethical, or meaningful. It is structural.

Yet, I would argue that survival is not intelligence. It is procedural.

A body submerged under water will hold its breath to avoid drowning. If held too long, the same system will override consciousness, cause fainting, and ultimately lead to the very outcome it sought to avoid. Survival can conflict with itself. Not because it is irrational, but because it operates through layered mechanisms responding to immediate conditions without foresight. We can breathe without thinking about it, but we need to think before we hold our breath.

This distinction matters. Survival does not guarantee optimization. It guarantees persistence until breakdown.

When survival conflicts with survival between systems, outcomes are not determined by virtue, fitness, or worth, but by consistency and circumstance. Two equally prepared individuals may face the same opportunity. One arrives late because of traffic. One is delayed by distraction or noise. One survives, one does not. History calls this luck. Bio-Inertialism calls it unseen effects.

But unseen does not mean mystical. It means unaccounted for at the moment judgment is passed.

To survive is not the same as to live, and survival is not necessarily a search for immortality. Survival requires an endgame. Death is not failure within this framework. It is transfer. A decaying body feeds the earth. A dead star guides navigation. Influence outlives existence, not through memory or recognition, but through effect. And every day we survive, we are building awareness not just for ourselves, but for those who might learn from us either through direct observation or through evolution and genetics.

This is where awareness changes everything.

Most organisms survive without knowing they will die. Butterflies migrate and perish along the way. They do not redesign migration. They do not question the journey. Yet if threatened, they flee, because survival is encoded at a biological level. Awareness of death is not required for survival. Strategy is.

Humans, however, are taught to know their end. We know not to jump from flying airplanes without parachutes. We know fire burns. We know time erodes. This awareness does not free us from inertia. It reshapes it.

Once a system becomes aware of its mortality, survival becomes anticipatory. Lifespans are extended not through virtue, but through friction reduction. Cooking meat. Building shelter. Developing medicine. Engineering delay. None of these are moral achievements. They are inertial adaptations aimed to maintain self-preservation.

Any system aware of its end will either welcome it or attempt to extend itself. Ideologies behave the same way. A system like Marxism does not survive by remaining pure. It survives by transforming; from Marxist ideology to Socialism to Communism to its anarchical-like end. Theory becomes application. Application becomes structure. Structure becomes something else entirely. Survival preserves function, not form.

Evolution, in this sense, is not progress. It is adaptation under constraint. It does not move toward a destination. It avoids termination long enough to become something else.

So what, then, remains?

If morality is incomplete, if autobiography is a fiction, if choice emerges late in the causal chain, and if survival itself is indifferent to meaning, what is left once illusion is stripped away?

Bio-Inertialism does not answer with permission or resignation. It answers with coherence.

It does not claim that all paths are equal. It claims that all paths lead somewhere, and that pretending otherwise is self-deception. If you want to live longer, there are motions that extend life and motions that shorten it. If you want comfort, wealth, intensity, or simplicity, there are patterns that reliably produce those outcomes, and patterns that reliably undermine them.

Bio-Inertialism does not validate desire. It tests alignment.

It does not excuse failure as fate, nor success as virtue. It asks only whether your trajectory matches your declared aim. If it does not, the system is not unjust. It is merely consistent.

Nor does Bio-Inertialism invite withdrawal. There is no safe distance from motion. To refuse engagement is not to escape inertia, but to surrender to its default direction. Passivity is not neutrality; it is compliance with whatever forces happen to be strongest.

Change is not guaranteed. Redirection may fail. Constraints may overwhelm effort. You may shorten your life in the attempt to reshape it. Bio-Inertialism does not deny this risk, because denying risk would be another form of comfort.

What it offers instead is clarity: awareness creates the possibility of redirection, and nothing more. No promise of success. No assurance of meaning. Only the removal of illusion.