(From Harvey's "Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference") Leibniz made a strong distinction between possible and compossible worlds. While the former embraces an infinite variety of potential creative choices, the latter restricts the spatial relations internalized within a particular choice set (e.g., the actually-existing monads in Leibniz's argument) to the orderings of coexistence actually found within that public space (or common universe) which all monads perceive. To be in that common world is to share given qualities of space and time by virtue of the "mutual relatedness and connectedness of its parts." Putting this in the context of the materials assembled on the social construction of space and time... entails that, while the social choice with respect to spatial and temporal ordering is potentially infinite, the actual social choice once made, condemns all "mutually related and connected" members of that social world to an existence within a common experiential framework of public space and time. ....it is crucial to understand that it is materially impossible for us to destroy the planet earth, that the worst we can do is to engage in material transformations of our environment so as to make life less rather than more comfortable for our own species being, while recognizing that what we do also does have ramifications (both positive and negative) for other living species. =============== (Concluding paragraphs of Voltaire's "Candide". The eternal optimist Pangloss is modeled on Leibniz.) And sometimes Pangloss would say to Candide: "All events form a chain in the best of all possible worlds. For in the end, if you had not been given a good kick up the backside and chased out of a beautiful castle for loving Miss Cunégonde, and if you hadn't been subjected to the Inquisition, and if you hadn't wandered about America on foot, and if you hadn't dealt the Baron a good blow with your sword, and if you hadn't lost all your sheep from that fine country of Eldorado, you wouldn't be here now eating candied citron and pistachio nuts." "That is well put," replied Candide, "but we must cultivate our garden." Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
