Planetarity

I first wrote about planetarity in early 2018, now almost eight years ago. Even then, I knew that the planet is a lot greater than climate.

In January 2026 I started a reading list.

I am going to create a foundational syllabus for Bhumics, which will have everything from the ancient to the modern. The syllabus should be useful for everyone who cares about a living planet; my take on the texts in it is of course, my own.

The syllabus began with governing the planet.

If you’re a knowledge worker like me, you have no idea of our earthly condition. I don’t gather or hunt my food, the water I drink comes out of a faucet and the air I am breathing right now is heated in my basement before it’s piped into my home office.

Nevertheless, if mediation is OK, alienation isn’t. If we are to survive as a species, and not cause untold suffering to other species, we need to embrace the condition of Planetarity.

Then I took up time.

That study reveals an Earth much older and much vaster than anything humans can control; our presence is a blip in a very long history of several billion years.

And then space.

To move forward, we must shift our perspective from the Global to the Planetary.

The syllabus ended in habitability, which has a room of its own.

Room on this floor: Habitability