Positive Bhumics is a Machiavellian description of planetary power and processes as they are. I hold it apart from the moral frameworks we've inherited, so that the normative can emerge in conversation with it. Description first, sermon later.
How the word moved
In Jan 2025 I modelled it on positive economics: see planetary processes without inserting existing moral ideas, in the spirit of critique, with Machiavelli as purva-paksa. By Mar 2025 it meant mapping how silicarbon structures shape power, and I paired it with Speculative Bhumics.
In my words
"We can use Machiavelli as a purva-paksa, an opponent whose perspective you have to take seriously."
from Bhumics Week 2, 28 Jan 2025
"we have to let the normative to emerge in conversation with the positive."
from Bhumics Week 2, 28 Jan 2025
Related
- Depends on Silicarbon - Positive Bhumics maps how silicarbon structures shape power.
- Inherited from Machiavelli - what I take from Machiavelli is the positive approach itself, the template.
- Related Speculative Bhumics - speculative thinking and positive thinking are deeply interrelated capacities.
- Related Pauper - the positive lens is what the Pauper must learn.
Still open
It takes me in directions I find unpleasant, geoengineering for one. I haven't settled how the normative is supposed to emerge.