Who Would Marcus Aurelius Vote For?

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1:44Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, audiobooks that we like here or recommend here at Daily Stoic and other long form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy and most importantly, that you're able to apply it to your actual life. Thank you for listening.

2:23hey it's ryan welcome to another weekend episode of the daily stoic podcast i've just been doing this cool thing my wife and i and actually my mother-in-law we signed up for this cool little program where they they mail you postcards with addresses and stamps and you write these little notes to people in different districts all over the country with the details of when they can vote early, how they can check their voter registration, just like a reminder of the dates, places, all the stuff they need to know to vote in the upcoming presidential election. Look, would it have probably been easier to donate a little bit of money?

3:01Sure. Do I feel like I use my platform here on the podcast, on the Daily Stoke email, on social media? Do I use it to to sort of talk about things that are important to be civically engaged? Yeah, I think I do. But there was something about like just the painstakingness and the repetitiveness of like filling out these hundreds of postcards. And then the satisfaction of like dropping them in the blue post office box and hearing them all hit the bottom and knowing those are going to fan out all over the country. And look, are most of them going to go in the trash? Yeah, sure, probably. but maybe someone will tack it up in their fridge and, you know, in a couple of weeks here, go and vote, which is a wonderful, magical thing that some of the Stoics knew about.

3:46Some of the Stoics were born after that had gone away. Certainly the founders influenced and inspired by ancient Greece and the Roman Republic as they were, didn't take it for granted. They weren't perfect, but they saw that as a sacred thing, a wonderful thing, and innovation, really. And look, what does all this have to do with today's episode? I wanted to talk about this upcoming election. And before you get upset, I talk about this a little bit in the episode, but I'm not going to tell you who to vote for. I'm not even going to talk about specific candidates. But I do want to talk about this idea of stoicism and the political process and participating in the political process, which is a really important thing.

4:29And it's an easy one to take for granted. And most people take it for granted and literally millions and millions of Americans just don't do it. And this is true all over the world. Although someone pointed out when I was in Australia, I was sort of talking about this. They were like, it's compulsory to vote in Australia. And this is, I believe, true in other countries. Not everyone lets their vote languish. But I wanted to talk about stoicism and politics today and why a Stoic must participate in politics and what a Stoic should be looking for as a leader. And this has already gotten some angry comments on YouTube, but I think it's important.

5:06And I wanted to do this deep dive into this very important topic. I don't know what district you live in. I don't know where you live. I don't know what your party affiliation is, but consider this a postcard for me on voting, on getting your stuff in order, and then doing some real serious introspection as to who has the character to represent the most powerful nation in the world. And then on the lower level, who respects this democratic process enough to be entrusted with those essential 100 or 400 plus votes in Congress? And then who is going to appoint the judges that are there to respect the rule of law?

5:56That's what we're going to be talking about in today's episode. Enjoy.

6:02Look, there's a lot we don't control about the world. That's frustrating. It's demoralizing. You could say it's unjust. You could say we deserve a better system. Totally agree. Remember what stoicism is, is about focusing on what we control. In America, just like big chunks of the rest of the world, 2024 is an election year. This is a timeless dilemma and issue. So what would Marcus Aurelius, a great philosopher king, a man who was quite suspicious of the enormous power he found himself suddenly entrusted with, what would the rest of the Stoics think who experienced Greece as a democracy, who experienced Rome as a republic, what would they have thought of in this election we face here in the United States?

6:47In this video, we're going to talk about what the Stoics thought about politics and reflect on the lessons they can teach us.

6:58And wait, before I lose you on this video, you might already be thinking, hey, why are you getting political? Stoicism is supposed to be this philosophy built around serenity, built around virtue, built around self-improvement. Why are we talking about politics? That's this divisive, immoral, hypocritical, nasty thing that's going to pull us apart instead of bring us together. And I agree, politics can be those things. But I think it's worth pointing out what profession the Stoics had more than any other. There were Stoics who were manual laborers. There were Stoics who were athletes. There were Stoics who were writers and playwrights.

7:35There were Stoics who served in the armed forces. But the vast majority of Stoics who had a job were not tenured, you know, lecturers. They were politicians. They not just participated in public life, but held public office. And in fact, Seneca tells us that this is the key separation between the Stoics and the Epicureans. Basically, the Epicureans retreated to the garden where they studied philosophy and pursued their self-actualization. And the Stoics entered the polis, entered public life. He said, an Epicurean will participate in politics only if something forces him to. He says, a Stoic will participate in politics unless something stops him.

8:15So the Stoics were engaged. And we have to think about this first and foremost, that if the philosophically inclined, if the virtue inclined, which all of us are, we wouldn't be talking about stoicism here. If we're not going to engage in politics, who is? Who are we seeding the field to? This is something that Pericles would say in ancient Athens. He said, one person's disengagement is untenable and less bolstered by someone else's commitment. meaning that when you decide, oh, I don't vote, when you decide, oh, I don't participate, oh, I'm above that, oh, that's nasty, I'm gonna stay away from that, you know what you're doing?

8:54You are seeding the field to precisely those influences that you say are negative. The Stoics were involved in politics and public life from the very beginning, and this is actually what Stoicism was evolving from. Some of the earlier Stoics, Zeno and Cleanthes and Chrysippus, although they weren't totally disengaged, they did come more from the cynic school, the school of focusing inward. And as Stoicism moved from Greece to Rome, it became much more public oriented, much more outwardly focused, and much more themed around the virtue of justice about participating in public life that ranges the spectrum of from holding office or potentially the highest office in the land to the simple and basic act of voting.

9:42So maybe you're thinking my vote doesn't matter. It's inconsequential. And there's a lot of statistical truth to this argument. First off, one vote of however many tens or hundreds of millions, one vote in a landscape that is gerrymandered, where there is voter suppression, where the electoral college, which is supposed to even in the playing field actually, in many cases, thwarts the will of the majority. Or perhaps you live in a state where because of your party affiliation, it feels pointless that you're not in what we would call a swing state. But it is interesting to think that the 2016 election, which had something like 135 million votes, was decided by 77 ,000 ballots across three states.

10:25Michigan was swung by just 10 ,000 voters. In this little town that I live here in Bastrop, Texas, two cycles ago, our city council election was decided by two votes, two votes. So had my wife and I decided not to vote, had any couple decided not to vote, the election would have turned out very differently. There was a piece in the New York Times not that long ago written by a woman named Anton Discalfani, who was a political minority in the southern town that she lived in. Her party hadn't held office in many, many years. But on the other side, they were having a primary between two candidates, one much more extreme than the other.

11:05So she decided to vote in that primary. And it turned out that election, that primary election was decided by one vote, one vote. So she cast the deciding vote in that election. And then the candidate who won the primary went on to win the general election. And this is what adults do. We take the avenues that are available to us. We exert control where we have the opportunity to exert control. And who knows, it might end up making an enormous difference. The idea that your vote doesn't matter is in some ways a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? People tell themselves it doesn't matter and so it ceases to be significant.

11:39And it's a striking fact that something like 50 % of people who are eligible to vote simply do not. They say, you know, Texas is not a red or a blue state where I live. Texas is an apathetic state. Most of the people who could vote don't. And so our candidates are selected by the primary process. Something like 2 % of voters vote in the primaries. And as a result, the candidates are extreme on both sides. And then both sides are unhappy about the candidates and then don't vote because they don't like either of the candidates. It's silly. Look, at the basic level, stoicism is about focusing on what you control.

12:18And as we said, we don't control who the candidates are. We don't control when the election is. We don't control that there's not a federal holiday for voting. We don't control that they try to make it more onerous to vote. We don't control any of the parts of the process, except whether we show up and cast the ballot. And I make a big show of this in my family. I try to take my kids with me when I go. I try to post a picture of it when I go. The idea is this part of it is definitely, definitively, inarguably in my control. Who I vote for and the fact that I go to the polls and vote, that's the one part of the process that I control.

12:52So let's start there. Let's make the most basic civil contribution that we can make.

13:02Now, one reason that people don't vote is they say to themselves, as we're talking about, I don't like the candidates. It's a choice between two evils. This is, of course, very silly. Welcome to reality. Being an adult is making tough choices, choices between two things that you don't like. In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius writes about how we can't go around expecting Plato's Republic. No one is a philosopher king. Marcus Aurelius is the exception that proves the rule, right? Most politicians, most people who want power are not going to be perfect and you're not going to agree with them on everything.

13:37You have to be an adult. and you have to make a decision. This is life. Cato, one of the towering Stoics, I think really struggled with it. He sometimes let his purity or his idealism get in the way of reality. Cicero said that Cato often believed that he lived in Plato's Republic, exactly the thing Mark Struis was warning against, and forgot that in fact he lived in the dregs of Romulus. It would be wonderful if we lived in the theoretical abstract utopian version of America or wherever it is that you live. But we don't. We live in the 2024 reality of that country. And who is in front of us is who is in front of us.

14:16We're gonna have to make a choice. We're gonna have to work with, for, vote for, with causes people we don't fully agree with or like. Cato was a great, a principled man. He was an effective politician in many ways because he was not corrupt, because he actually cared about doing the people's business, because he held himself to a high standard. But there is a story that I've told before, but he struggled with the idea of alliances. Pompey returns from his military conquests, seeks to enter Rome's public life, and he seeks out Cato, this great, brilliant, principled leader, and seeks a political alliance.

14:53And at that time, alliances were often made through marriage. And he proposes a marriage into Cato's family. And the women in Cato's family were actually excited about this. And Cato says, no, no, no, I will not be purchased by way of women's apartments, meaning I'm not going to collaborate with you and create an alliance this way, sort of each man for himself. Plutarch, the biographer whose grandson would actually go on to be Marcus Aurelius's philosophy teacher, laments the high minded and high handedness of Cato here, because what Pompey ended up doing was getting this marriage alliance, but with Caesar instead.

15:27And he remarks that Cato, who wanted to preserve the Roman Republic, ends up in many ways bringing about its very collapse because he refused this alliance. The ability to compromise, the ability to make choices between lesser evils is essential.

15:46Okay, but what makes a good leader? What do the Stoics have to tell us about the characteristics that we should look for in a leader? And actually, as it happens in meditations, at the beginning of meditations, Marcus Aurelius talks a lot about what he learned from his stepfather, Antoninus. It's said that of all the models for Marcus Aurelius's life, none was more dear to him than Antoninus. Antoninus was a lifelong politician who held elected office. He was a senator. He served in all the different important offices in Roman life before Hadrian sees in him a worthy guardian for Marcus Aurelius, who he wants to eventually become emperor.

16:24Hadrian probably thought that Marcus would spend a few years under Hadrian, who was much older before Hadrian passed on, and then Marcus took over. Instead, Marcus spends 20 years essentially as Antoninus's apprentice. What does he learn from Antoninus? We see this in the entry that he gives to him in his debts and lessons chapters, meditations. He says, what I learned from my adopted stepfather, and I'm going to sort of skim and summarize here. He says, compassion, unwavering adherence to decisions once you'd reach them, indifference to superficial honors, hard work, persistence, listening to anyone who could contribute to the public good, his dogged determination to treat people as they deserved, a sense of when to push and when to back off, his altruism, his constant devotion to the empire's needs, his stewardship of the treasury, his willingness to take responsibility and blame for both.

17:14And I think this is a beautiful thing. He says, you could have said of him, as they say of Socrates, that he knew how to enjoy and abstain from things that most people find it hard to abstain from and all too easy to enjoy. He said, strength, perseverance, and self-control in both areas, the mark of a soul in readiness, indomitable.

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19:14What made Marcus Aurelius great? I mean, it's the example of Antoninus. But what made Rome great? We had this period, these five great emperors, five great leaders in a row. And Antoninus was arguably the greatest of them. All the other rulers, including Marcus Aurelius, given that he passes the reins to Commodus, all the others have something to apologize for, some shame, some fatal flaw, but not Antoninus. And I guess what I'm saying here in this video is we think about voting. Look, we don't get an Antoninus. We don't get a Marcus Aurelius. But who's closest to that? When you think of the things that stand out that Marcus Aurelius is pointing out in the leader, what was he talking about?

19:55He says that he wasn't shameless, that he was honest, that he worked hard, that he wasn't susceptible to flattery, that he respected the needs of the treasury. He was a good steward of the people's money, that he was altruistic, selfless, that he worked hard, that he wasn't a hypochondriac or a megalomaniac, that he accepted the bounty and the success both in his personal life and in the empire, but he didn't let it go to his head and that he worked with people that he disagreed with. He got the best out of them. Something very, very impressive about Antoninus in that sense, and sadly, all too rare these days.

20:33And certainly, I would say someone with the opposite of these characteristics deserves to be nowhere near the White House and certainly nowhere near in possession of what the most powerful man or woman in the world today is in possession of, which is nuclear weapons, the ability to wipe out all of humanity in an instance, who, if the person you are voting for bringing into power, is not philosophical, is not in command of the greatest empire, but the Stoics would call command of themselves, then they have no business being in the halls of power.

21:09There were examples of great leaders in antiquity, and there were plenty of examples of terrible leaders in antiquity. We're told that Marcus Aurelius breaks down and cries when he's told he will one day be emperor because he can think of all the bad things of history. This is why the Romans were so suspicious of kings and dictators, is that they knew, as we know now, that absolute power corrupts absolutely. And Marx was really concerned about being Caesarified, dyed purple, changed by the power that he held. And we've seen this happen to presidents. We've seen this happen to powerful people for all time.

21:41If a leader does not have good character, does not have command of themselves, is not a virtuous person. Not only are they ill-suited to lead, but they are ill-suited to be exposed to so much power. It will corrupt and destroy them. Seneca must have experienced this with Nero. The first few years of Nero's reign were okay. They were known as the five golden years of Nero's reign. And this is when he was primarily listening to his advisors, advisors like Seneca. But as power worked its way through Nero's DNA, it exposed something. That's an interesting thing we hear from the presidential biographer, Robert Caro.

22:21He says, you know, power doesn't corrupt. That's too simple. He says power reveals. And what it revealed about Nero was that he was vain, that he was insecure, that he needed desperately for people to like him, and that at the most fundamental level, he wasn't competent. He wasn't good at the job. What he really wanted to be was a poet or an artist. We're told of a poet that he banishes because the man was too talented. Ultimately, Nero couldn't cut it. He was also unstable and murderous. There's a joke from a man put to death by Nero as he's examining the grave he's about to be put in. He goes, ugh, even this is not up to code.

22:57Nero was a bad leader. He didn't actually have the chops. He liked the trappings of power. He liked the fame, the importance. His ego could wrap itself around why he deserved to be powerful. But he lacked what good leaders before and after, and certainly to today understand, which is that the leader is actually the servant of the people. That, yes, we bestow power and significance on people, but this comes with an immense amount of responsibility. In the end, Nero exiles philosophers. He persecutes minorities. When disaster strikes, he's nowhere to be found. He doesn't want to do the dirty, unpleasant, exhausting work of leadership.

23:36He was no Antoninus, to say the least. And the Stoics are not morally blameless here. Seneca tells himself he's the adult in the room, that he's helping Nero become less bad. But in the end, he grows quite wealthy in Nero's service. And in the end, he is ultimately complicit. And of course, this is a timeless theme that I've talked to a number of modern day politicians and leaders who have served in recent administrations about. You can tell yourself you're kind of this martyr. It plays into your savior complex, that you're doing the Lord's work, that your people have no idea how bad it would be if you didn't step up and do what you do.

24:09if you didn't do step up and fill that thankless role that so many people were quick to condemn. And there is some truth to that. Seneca made Nero less bad in the early years. But in the end, as he's helping the man write speeches after he tries to and ultimately succeeds in killing his own mother, as Seneca has to quip to him, Nero, you can't kill all your successors. Eventually someone will take her place. Seneca should have walked away earlier. He knows he should have walked away earlier. He wasn't just dyed purple. He was dyed red. Seneca says this. He says, you know, it's okay for a philosopher to be successful and important and rich as long as that isn't stained in blood.

24:47And I think it's hard to say that Seneca's life wasn't ultimately stained or at least spattered by the blood that Nero spilt. When you have someone who's a hypocrite, when you have someone who lies, when you have someone who has character that you would refuse to tolerate in a boss or a coworker, someone you would never invest money in, that you'd want your daughter to spend time alone in a room with, let alone work for, you get yourself into trouble. The Stoics knew that character was fate. It ultimately didn't matter how much or little you agree with someone on certain issues. Ultimately, character is fate.

25:25And there's a story. It's actually ironic who tells this story in today's politics, a story about a frog who gives a scorpion a ride across a stream. And the scorpion assures the frog that he won't sting him, that he just needs the ride. And midway through, the scorpion stings the frog and kills him. And as the frog is dying, the scorpion says, what do you expect? I'm a scorpion. And that's a timeless idea for the Stoics. They knew that people of bad character, people who are dishonest, that when people show you who they are, you have to believe them. That people of bad character should not be in positions of power.

26:04Musonius Rufus, who wrote a fascinating essay about teaching philosophy to leaders and to kings, he said, every king has to be a philosopher and every philosopher has to be a kingly person. This was his statement about the power, the predictive power and the essential nature of virtue and character in a person. You can't vote for leaders with bad character. You can can't give them the keys to the kingdom.

26:31One of the reasons people say they don't vote is it's not going to affect my life. It's not going to change anything for me. And there's some truth to that. Like in the last election, didn't really change my life. The election before that didn't really change my life. This upcoming one is probably not going to change my life. It might make my taxes go up a little bit. It might make my taxes go down a little bit, but I'm not dependent on institutions or government the way that a lot of people are. And in fact, many of our needs are different than the needs of millions and millions of other people out there.

27:02I could send my kids to private school if I need to. I could flee the country if I needed to. I can afford higher taxes. I am not changed that much if my taxes are lower. But the important thing you have to realize about politics is politics affect everyone. They don't just affect you. And so is the person who assumes power in this election, is their predilections, their platform, their decisions, is it going to affect the people in Ukraine? Is it going to affect single mothers? Is it going to affect minorities? Is it going to affect people who are gay or trans? Absolutely. And there's something entitled.

27:41There's something quite cruel about going, I don't care. They're the same to me. Or all that matters to me is this little optimization that one candidate is going to do for me versus another. You have to think about how it's going to affect people other than you. The philosopher John Rawls talks about this going through life almost as if there's a veil in front of your face and that you don't know your place in society. So you have to think about policies, platforms, terms, ideas, candidates, not assuming that you know where it's going to pan out for you. You have to think about how it's going to be best for as many people as possible.

28:16Or I think better yet, having the empathy to assume if I was at the bottom rung of society, might I feel very differently about this? In meditations, Mark Sturlitz says, injustice isn't just something we do. We can also commit an injustice, he says, by doing nothing, by shrugging your shoulders, by saying it doesn't matter by saying, hey, what actually only matters to me is this little thing. You are in fact having a profound impact on other people. And this cuts both ways, right? There are activists, single issue activists, who are very upset with people that they largely agree with on 95 % of issues.

28:51But because their candidate isn't going far enough on this issue or that issue, they are willing to burn it all down or willing to vote out of spite or allow out of spite a person that they disagree with on everything. That's what children do. That is the definition of petulance. So again, you have to think about who else is this affecting? And maybe you're thinking, Marcus Aurelius is an emperor. He's an all-powerful king. He wouldn't vote at all. Actually, little known fact, so Rome used to be a Republican. As a Republican, it had two consuls or two joint presidents who ruled at the same time for relatively short term.

29:26When Julius Caesar overthrows the Republic, which the Stoics, Cato most of all resisted, and Rome becomes an emperor under Octavian, then who becomes Augustus, who also has two Stoic teachers who I talk about in Lives of the Stoics, Athenodorus and Arius Didymus. Rome kind of becomes this hybrid system. So the Senate remains, the emperor is basically known as the first citizen, and the office of consul continues to exist, and people are elected to that office, even though they don't outrank the emperor. Seneca serves as consul under Nero, but Marcus Aurelius and Antoninus, his stepfather, both run for the office of consul.

30:07And even though in some respects they could just anoint themselves this honor, we're told by ancient historians that they treat that role as something serious and they actually campaign for it and they respect the electoral process. So Marcus inherits a system that he has nothing to do with. And it would be neater for this historical narrative if he'd somehow restored the Republic. But he does respect, in a nod to the old ways, this electoral process. And we're told he intended to leave the empire to two sons. Again, a nod to the idea of consuls. He gives half of his power away during his term to Lucius Ferris.

30:44The idea for him that there'd be this single ruler who rules for a lifetime that could not be checked by anyone and was never up, was never subjected to the votes of the people, we know for a fact that he didn't support that. So I think it's interesting.

31:01So the question in this video is who would Marcus Aurelius vote for? And maybe you thought I was going to get really political and talk about the platform of this candidate or that candidate. But you notice I haven't talked about any of them. What I wanted to do was go back and ground this in some core principles. I wanted to talk about our sacred obligation to participate in politics because it wasn't always this way. People fought and died to give us this system. The founders, inspired by the Stoics, rooted the American system in the classical system. They were inspired by Greece and Rome and these names that we're talking about, Cicero and Cato and Marcus Aurelius and Helvidius and all of these great Stoics.

31:42And we spit in their face when we ignore that obligation. And then the other reason that I didn't talk about specific candidates is, well, the answer is obvious. When you look at character, when you look at values, when you look at temperament, when you ask yourself, which of these people is in command of themselves? Which one of them is immune to flattery, as Antoninus was talking about? Which one of them listens to anyone who could contribute to the public good? Which one is indifferent to superficial honors? Which one is loyal to their friends? Which one asks searching questions at meetings?

32:15Isn't content with first impressions? Which one doesn't support demagoguery, currying favor, pandering? Which one of them is always sober, always steady, and never vulgar or prey to fads? Who's never been called glib or shameless or pedantic? I'll leave the decision to you as the electoral system does. I would urge you to think about this stuff like a Stoic and do the right thing.

32:47When I wrote The Daily Stoic eight years ago, I had this crazy idea that I would just keep it going. The book was 366 meditations, but I'd write one more every single day and I'd give it away for free as an email. I thought maybe a few people would sign up. Couldn't have even comprehended a future in which three quarters of a million people would get this email every single day and would for almost a decade. If you want to get the email, if you want to be part of a community that is the largest group of Stoics ever assembled in human history, I'd love for you to join us. You can sign up and get the email totally for free.

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