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UofWinds 407, Week 10 2025: Does Voting Matter in Ontario, Political Parties Are Illegal in the United States, Utopian Realism, No Neutral Ground in a Burning World, Phronesis, Make Life Possible


Good morning. I have to admit, I've been struggling with the deciding of what to share in this fortnight's issue as there is a tremendous amount of uncertainty and upheaval in this moment that we are in.

Each week has been a decade.

I have decided to share most of what I have bookmarked as worthy over the last two weeks. As always, take what you need and leave the rest.

Does Voting Matter in Ontario and Political Parties Are Illegal in the United States

One of the reasons why I have been struggling in this moment, is that I have been grieving for this present and for all the futures that are no longer possible from here.

In the United States, science is being gutted, public health is being wiped out, social services are being dismantled, and the civic service is being wrecked. In the name of improving government service through technology, 18F, the agency which had a track record of cost savings and improved service through modern technology practice, was eliminated.

Among other things, targeting 18F sends a clear message that tech workers are being coerced into serving the needs of capital. Even for those who never took it, civic tech work held the promise of escape, the dream of using tech for good. And dreams are dangerous [Mandy Brown].

I say this coming from a place where the exact same things have already happened, but just, slowly. In Ontario, everything I've listed above has already happened, including our version of 18F which was shuttered last year. And in response, the government was elected with a clear majority.

If you follow provincial politics in Ontario, you might find this panel discussion on The Agenda called Does Voting Matter in Ontario [32:42] as food for thought. A warning: this panel does not provide a viable path of how to go forward. In fact, the conversation goes in circles for a bit and in doing so, deftly illustrates why party dynamics keep us quietly drowning in a political quagmire.

For the political wonks who care not one whit of Ontario, may I offer instead this recommendation from the Flux Collective newsletter.

  • Political Parties Are Illegal in the United States (Michael Kinnucan) — Argues that American political parties, unlike those in almost every other modern democracy, aren’t allowed to control who runs under their banner or who gets to vote in their primaries. The two major parties, thus, aren’t self-regulating civil society organizations so much as labels that politicians choose to run under. If you squint, the American primary-then-general election system is basically an open “two-round ‘runoff’” system where voters pick one of the two first-round elections to vote in, and the top two finishers go head-to-head.

Utopian Realism and No Neutral Ground in a Burning World


Look, I don't believe in The Secret but if you pressed me, I would confess that my secret self would love to indulge in thinking of herself as some sort of Cayce Pollard — a savant of pattern recognition.

And so I say unto you, that the Universe suggests that in this moment, we should pay attention to the man of all seasons.

This week I stumbled upon two insightful works that feature Thomas More, who served Henry VIII as Lord High Chancellor of England from October 1529 to May 1532. The first is an essay called Utopian Realism from science fiction writer and futurist Bruce Sterling, who tells the story behind Thomas More's Utopia and whether being of no-place is a version of the good life or is being just another annoying tourist.

The book was published 500 years ago in the Latin language. The author was Sir Thomas More — but Thomas More was a lawyer. He didn’t plan to be a novelist. In the book, he claims that he’s simply writing down the testimony of Raphael Hythlodaeus. The source for the book is allegedly Raphael (according to Thomas).

So, the novel “Utopia” was a kind of a hoax or a joke that Thomas More invented — while he was on vacation.

This book project happened because More had to leave England on official business. He had to leave his private home, and his beloved family, and take part in public life, as a diplomat in the service of the king of England.

So, Thomas More had to travel, and go meet some Spanish officials in the city of Bruges on the European continent. So he left England, and he dutifully journeyed to Bruges. But — after some weeks of diplomatic struggle — he realized that the negotiations were going nowhere. His negotiations were a hoax and a joke, because the king of England and the king of Spain were quarreling. They had no intention of ever reaching an agreement.

The second recommendation is a recorded presentation from the Chaos Computing Club meeting of 2013 from Quinn Norton and Eleanor Saitta. On the surface, this talk is about state surveillance but No Neutral Ground in a Burning World is really attempting to get at something deeper: if the printing press allowed writers to attack political positions from the safety of other countries, should it not give us pause what technologists are enabling The State "to see" with our present networks? And yes, this work of James C. Scott is referenced in their talk.

Phronesis and Make Life Possible


I shared the Thomas More readings above because, like most fallible humans, I would love to believe that there's something more to coincidence that is likely just pure happenstance. Are those works really what we need in this moment? The story of a man who was killed by a king for upholding his principles? I certainly hope not.

Instead, let me leave you with two works that both suggested that this moment requires calm and reflection but not at the expense of prudent action.

Phronesis - Theory and Practice [9:31] is a video essay from THUNK. Who is the person behind this YouTube channel dedicated to matters of philosophy? I have no idea but I do like THUNK's description:

A show about things that tickle your brain - science, philosophy, mathematics, culture, rationality, technology, language, design...you've stopped reading this, haven't you? I mean either you're already intrigued or you've scrolled past already. I could probably put just about anything here because we've sorted potential viewers by this point. The only ones left are "people who enjoy reading meta-commentary," so, hi there! You should probably also watch the show - it's probably right up your alley.

It's me. I enjoy meta-commentary. This episode of the show was right up my alley.

"What do Aristotle, Carl von Clausewitz, and John Dewey have in common? They're all better reading than the news right now, and they all stress the importance of prudent action.

The second balm I can prescribe is the essay Make Life Possible from Mandy Brown, who also draws from James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State. It begins,

Uncertainty is the condition of not knowing what comes next, the fear of change that is beyond our control and likely at odds with our thriving. It is a state of worry, of insecurity, of a lack of faith in the systems that keep us alive and living. It is, so often, intolerable.

And yet, as Le Guin reminds us, uncertainty is also the only thing that makes life possible. Without it, we would move like automatons through predetermined paths, unspirited, unaware, unliving. Our awareness of life, of its great variety and beauty and possibility, emerges out of uncertainty. Awareness, that sense of being awake to the world, is necessary only because we live in uncertainty. If we knew what was to come, we would have no need for sensemaking, no need to be alert to what’s around us, no need to ever open our eyes and ears and arms to each other.

This is, perhaps, the great paradox of modern technologies: in a world without uncertainty, we would need only be aware of our screens—nothing else would matter. But in the deeply uncertain world we do live in, we cling to those screens because they promise the one thing we can never have.

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