On elections

If there is a time to be a Stoic, it is now

Image from arkvalleyvoice.com, CC license.

Tomorrow, November 5th, 2024, will be the day citizens of the United States will choose a new president. Both sides seem to think that this election will be historical, one way or the other. Both claim that the American democratic experiment itself is at stake. Both think the other side is garbage or evil. The rest of the world is also very much interested in the outcome, because the US—for good or otherwise—still has an outsized influence on what happens across the planet.

Tomorrow there will be people who will look suspiciously at their neighbors or even family members, and who will be genuinely worried about what comes next. The thing is, we truly don’t know what will come next. The polls are basically 50-50, which means that it is a fool’s errand to make predictions. One side has already announced that it will not accept the results and will challenge them by legal means. Commentators are concerned about the likely possibility of violence. And the uncertainty will probably last way past election night.

I am not going to tell you who I will vote for, nor am I going to present an argument in favor of this or that candidate. I have my opinions, but I have no special expertise in political science. And I’m sure we are all sick and tired of opinions and arguments, which have been thrown at us mercilessly for many months now. Each of us will have to vote their conscience and hopefully manage to be at peace with the outcome.

I am also not going to give an in-depth analysis of all the things that are wrong with the US electoral system, though there certainly are plenty of those to consider. Suffice to say that a recent survey found that the US ranks lowest among liberal democracies.

So what is this essay about, then? Consider it a public edition of my philosophical diary, a technique for reflection and ethical self-improvement that goes back at the least to the Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, and which has been shown to be very helpful by modern cognitive science. Perhaps these notes will be useful to you as well.

One of the most important concepts in Stoicism is also one of the most useful when facing the outcome (and aftermath) of a national election. I’m talking, of course, about Epictetus’s fundamental rule:

“Up to us are will and everything that results from will; not up to us are the body, the parts of the body, possessions, parents, brothers, children, the country of our birth, and in short, all the people with whom we associate.” (Discourses, 1.22.10)

Epictetus makes a sharp distinction between facts—which are out there, independent of our minds and, often, of our actions—and value judgments—which are the result of our prohairesis, our will, or reasoning faculty. Things out there do not come with labels attached to them that tell us whether they are good or bad. We evaluate those things, so-called externals, and decide whether they are good, bad, neutral, or whatever. Even things that may at first sight appear to be obviously bad, like death, can be assessed to be otherwise:

“People are troubled not by things but by their judgments about things. Death, for example, isn’t frightening, or else Socrates would have thought it so.” (Enchiridion, 5a)

So here are is the first practical lesson: I need to ask myself what, concerning the election, is or is not up to me. Up to me is the judgment of which candidate to prefer and why; also up to me is the judgment that such candidate deserves some of my money to help their campaign, and of course my vote tomorrow. Up to me, moreover, is to talk to people about what is going on in an attempt not to persuade but to reason together. That’s it. Everything else is not up to me. I don’t control the outcome of the election, whether such outcome will be recognized or overturned, whether people will respond civilly or with violence, what the courts will do about it, and so on. According to Epictetus, I need to do what is up to me and then prepare to accept what is not up to me with equanimity.

Ah, equanimity! It means “evenness of mind especially under stress” (Merriam-Webster). But how is it possible, and indeed is it even right, to strive for equanimity when the other side is obviously evil? I reach again for Epictetus:

“‘Shouldn’t a thief or an adulterer be eliminated, just for being who he is?’ No, and you’d do better to phrase your question like this: ‘Should we do away with this person because he’s mistaken and misled about matters of supreme importance, and because he’s become blind—not in the sense that he’s lost the ability to distinguish white and black by sight, but because he’s lost the mental ability to distinguish good and bad?’ If you put the question like this, you’ll realize how inhumane it is, and see that it’s no different from saying, ‘So shouldn’t we kill this blind person, or this deaf person?’ If a person is injured most by the loss of the most important things, and if the most important thing in every individual is right will, what’s the point in getting angry with someone if he loses it?” (Discourses, 1.18.5-8)

The Stoics, following Plato, thought that ignorance is the root of all evil. And boy have we seen a huge truckload of ignorance playing out during this presidential campaign! I’m not talking about ignorance in the sense of lack of a college degree. Nor just about ignorance of facts, though that certainly matters. I’m talking about ignorance concerning the most important kind knowledge there is: knowledge of what is good or bad. In other words, I’m talking about lack of wisdom.

I need to remind myself that people “on the other side” lack wisdom, but are otherwise convinced that they know the truth and how to act accordingly. Of course my side also lacks wisdom, just, in my opinion, a little less so, and that difference could make the lives of millions of people miserable or not, depending on who will win the election.

Wait a minute, though, am I absolutely certain of this? Do I really know that my side is wiser, even if a little bit, than the other? I am not certain of it, as that would make me into a dogmatist, an attitude which I actually think is at the root of a lot of society’s problems. But I’m also not going to go as far as the Pyrrhonists, who would counsel me to suspend judgment on the grounds that the arguments on my side are just as convincing as those on the other side.

That may be true in some cases, but I don’t think it is true for these elections. Just because there are two sides it doesn’t follow that we have no good reasons to lean, even strongly, one way or the other. Instead of dogmatism or Pyrrhonism I take the position of the other skeptical school of Greco-Roman antiquity, the Academy in the version articulated by Carneades and Cicero. As the latter aptly put it:

“It is characteristic of the Academy to put forward no conclusions of its own, but to approve those which seem to approach nearest to the truth; to compare arguments; to draw forth all that may be said in behalf of any opinion; and, without asserting any authority of its own, to leave the judgement of the inquirer wholly free.” (De Divinatione, 2.150)

I—as an inquirer—have compared arguments, I have drawn forth what can be said one way or the other, and I currently approve of what seems to me nearest to the truth, with the caveat that I could change my mind, if new facts and arguments begin to point in a different direction.

You may be skeptical of the notion that I was able to overcome my biases and truly arrive at an objective assessment of the political discourse. And you’d be right. There is no such thing as overcoming one’s biases, we can only challenge them and reduce their impact (especially by way of confronting our opinions with those of others). And there is no such thing as human objective judgment, because we inherently have a point of view, assume certain things about the world, trust some sources rather than others, and adopt some values rather than others. But I can honestly say that I’ve done my best. I’m not a sage, I can do no more.

Fine, but one thing is to prepare to accept the outcome of the election with equanimity, another thing is to be ready to deal with the practical consequences of the policies that will be enacted by whoever wins. Here too, Epictetus comes to the rescue:

“In every situation, remember to turn to yourself and try to find what means you have for dealing with it. If you see an attractive man or woman, you’ll find that self-control is the appropriate faculty. If you’re in pain, you’ll find it to be fortitude. If someone’s maligning you, you’ll find it to be patience. If you make this your habitual practice, you won’t be carried away by your impressions.” (Enchiridion, 10)

According to the Stoics, no matter what the situation, Nature has given us the resources to deal with it, in the form of one of the virtues and, more basically, in the form of our prohairesis, the only thing that nobody can take from us, the only part of us that is truly ours.

Epictetus himself endured slavery and exile, not to mention an angry master who twisted his leg until it broke, disabling him for the rest of his life. And yet, he went on to become the most renown teacher of the early second century, befriended by emperors, an household name for the following seventeen centuries. Since I’m unlikely to suffer that sort of severe setbacks no matter who will win tomorrow, surely I can find it in myself to act virtuously regardless of the external situation.

What if my side wins, though? Does that mean all of the above suddenly becomes irrelevant and I can just bask in the outcome? People often seem to think that Stoicism is good only in order to deal with adversity and to overcome obstacles. But that’s foolish. We need philosophy not just to survive a storm but also to navigate calm waters, because even in calm waters we need to have an idea of where we are going and why. Besides, the next storm is probably just around the corner.

So, if you are a US citizen, tomorrow do your civic duty as a member of the cosmopolis: vote according to your conscience and the best of your reasoning abilities. If you are not a US citizen, the above considerations still apply, because you will be affected, directly or indirectly, by what’s going to happen at the polling stations. And remember:

“You may not yet be Socrates, but you ought to live as someone who wants to be Socrates.” (Enchiridion, 51)