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UofWinds 408, Week 12, 2025: What You Should Do, The Tyranny of Public Opinion / We're getting the social media crisis wrong, The Waters of Lethe Flow From Our Digital Streams / The transformative power of journaling


Good morning. I am trying to start today's newsletter from the desk in the study but my cat demands tribute first. She's learned not to walk on my keyboard but she pretty much goes everywhere else on the table. Now that she is no longer directly in front of my computer, she's currently sitting on an unfinished LEGO portrait, watching me type.

A friend found my last newsletter a bit dark – so much so that she reached out and checked on me. I told her that I appreciated the kind gesture and assured her that I was doing well. I explained that this newsletter is one of the ways that I work through everything as I try to make sense of the times and the world and so it dips and rises accordingly. I think we all have an inner barometer that respond when external pressures suddenly spike or drop.

I subscribe to a great number of newsletters and over the last handful of weeks and I've noted which ones give some acknowledgement of the extraordinary historical moment we are in and which ones are carrying on like its business as usual. I need the former and I can live without the latter.

An aside for the all the nerds reading: UofWinds now also exists in the fediverse @index@www.uofwinds.com thanks to ghost.

What You Should Do


One of my self-imposed rules for this newsletter was that I would share works that I think others might also find useful or beautiful but I would not dole out advice. Instead of suggesting what you should do in this moment, I will instead recommend this short essay called, What You Should Do from another newsletter [ht].

This isn't about grand heroic gestures. It's about the daily choice to be fully present in your own moral reality. It's about deciding that, whatever comes, you'll be able to face yourself in the mirror. It's about recognizing that in times of systemic failure, the only reliable security comes not from institutions or financial reserves, but from the bonds we forge through authentic moral action and mutual aid.

So what should you do? Stop asking that question as if there's a single answer that applies to everyone. Start asking instead: What does my most authentic self demand in this moment? What action would make me feel whole rather than diminished? What truth needs speaking that only I can articulate in my unique way?

Then do that thing. Not once, not as a performance, but consistently. Not with an eye toward results, but with a commitment to process. Not because it will necessarily "work," but because it's the only thing that will allow you to recognize yourself when this is all over.

The Tyranny of Public Opinion / We're getting the social media crisis wrong


Rumours are flying that suggest that tomorrow the prime minister of Canada will call a federal election and that it may happen as soon as the end of April. Local politicians have already been limbering up for this frenetic race with last minute funding promises and oversized proclamations and gestures.

My own city councillor is preparing to make a run to represent his party at the federal level so he can demand "bail reform". Reader, our local detention center has been over-capacity by as much as 129% for some years now with 80% detainees within awaiting trial because of a lack of investment from the provincial government.

What I have been asking myself in response is: it is worth it to try to argue against claims for more restrictive bail with facts in the form of a Facebook comment? After reading Peter Shamshiri's The Tyranny of Public Opinion, I'm not so sure.

Many political strategists imagine that voters hold a handful of heartfelt positions, and that the goal of politicians is to meet them where they are. You find some voters who support gay rights, you find some others who support environmental conservation, you offer them favorable policies, and voila, you’ve got a political coalition brewing. If too many voters come out against one of those issues, you drop it to save your skin and preserve the rest of your coalition.

That is almost entirely backwards. A wealth of research shows that voters don’t come to their policy preferences organically - they follow the cues of political figures they identify with. Meaning that generally speaking, it’s not that politicians see where voters stand and try to move toward them, it’s the other way around.

This sounds unintuitive and almost unbelievable to most people who hear it. Are we all really just moving at the whims of political elites?

Complicating the dynamics of public opinion, of course, are the social media platforms. This is why I believe the essay We're getting the social media crisis wrong from political scientist Henry Farrel pairs so well with the above.

My explanation of what is happening is this. We tend to think of the problem of social media as a problem of disinformation - that is, of people receiving erroneous information and being convinced that false things are in fact true. Hence, we can try to make social media better through factchecking, through educating people to see falsehoods and similar. This is, indeed, a problem, but it is not the most important one. The fundamental problem, as I see it, is not that social media misinforms individuals about what is true or untrue but that it creates publics with malformed collective understandings. That is a more subtle problem, but also a more pernicious one. Explaining it is going to require some words. Bear with me.

The Waters of Lethe Flow From Our Digital Streams / The transformative power of journaling


There have been some evenings as of late in which I have let myself disassociate as I let media wash over me and overwhelm the senses. And I feel badly afterwards.

And I know I am not alone in feeling this.

Consider two related experiences. The first is the experience of setting out to accomplish a specific task on your digital device of choice, and then finding, after several minutes of aimless wandering from app to app or tab to tab, that you no longer remember what it was that you set out to accomplish in the first place.

The second is the experience that starts with sitting down in the late evening, maybe to catch your breath after a day of work. You have other things you need or desire to do, but you decide to check your phone while you give yourself this short break. An hour goes by, maybe two or maybe three. You never get to that thing you wanted to do. You don’t quite feel like you got much of a break either. At various points you thought about pulling away from the feed, but you couldn’t quite manage it. Your will power could not achieve escape velocity from the inertial pull of the infinite scroll.

I presume most if not all of you will readily recognize these experiences. What they have in common are the qualities of aimlessness and forgetfulness. And I wonder whether they do not present us with an important clue into the nature of our digital condition.

L. M. Sacasas' The Waters of Lethe Flow From Our Digital Streams is not just another lament about what the digital is doing to us. The diagnosis of what particular harm is being done in turn, suggests the remedy:

We need a practice of anamnesis, a remembering of reality outside of the digital cave of shadows. Maybe we just need to practice the discipline of refusing to drink from the waters of the digital stream in the first place.7 What matters most in this regard is obviously not our capacity to recall discrete bits of information. Rather it is the practice of remembering what is deep down at the heart of things, and holding that vision before us. This vision of the good, if we might so call it, has the power to move us to action, to sustain our labor and our care, to strengthen us against the alienating and disintegrating forces let loose in our world. Perhaps this is why Mnemosyne is the mother of the muses. Creative, intellectual, and perhaps even moral energy flows from such remembering.

I am reminded that I feel better when I take the time to write things down at the end of the day.

One of my favourite chapters of the book The Notebook was the one dedicated to the connection between journaling and self-care. Until then, I had never known about the studies that made the connection between journaling and improved mental health. This chapter is not available online but Jillian Anthony at Vox covers the same subject in the essay, The transformative power of journaling: Writing down your thoughts can be good for your mental health.

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