Complexity becomes the great alibi, both scientifically and morally. The world is so complex that we can think of it only in terms of fragmented narratives or, much more common in spite of the post-modernist fashion, in terms of positive and positivist case studies. The world is so complex that I cannot accept any moral responsibility for its development. Morality retracts: morality is about being good to the people around me, beyond that immediate circle the world is too complex, the relation between actions and consequences too complicated. When I stop my car at the traffic lights (for most academics in Mexico are of the car-driving class), I give (or do not give) a peso to the people begging there, but I do not ask what it is about the organisation of the world that creates more and more misery and how that organisation can be changed. That sort of question has become both morally and scientifically ridiculous. What is the point of asking it when we know that there is no answer?
- John Holloway, in Zapatismo and the Social Sciences.
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