He wore a toga and spoke Latin. This ancient philosopher can help us navigate the anxiety of the 2024 election.

CNN
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Some of you are watching the presidential polls religiously, others ignore political news like an overdue bill, and still others wish they could fast-forward through November with the push of a button.

Americans have devised all sorts of strategies to cope with the constant stress of this year’s presidential election. The rematch between President Biden and former President Trump has been called “the most feared election in modern political history.” As the two rivals prepare for Thursday’s debate, six in 10 American adults say they are already exhausted by election coverage.

But there’s another way to deal with anxiety about the future: by looking to the past. When we think of the Stoics of ancient Greece and Rome, the following image might come to mind: Boring, bearded white men in togas lived thousands of years ago, but sages like Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius have a lot of practical advice for today’s voters trying to navigate this year’s relentless presidential election.

Stoicism teaches that it is impossible to live a happy life without being virtuous, and it also has a lot to say about facing your worst fears. Definitions of Stoicism vary, but best-selling author Ryan Holiday describes it as “a tool for the pursuit of self-control, perseverance, and wisdom.”

Stoicism was first founded in Athens in the early 3rd century BCE by a philosopher named Zeno of Cition. After losing all his possessions in a shipwreck, Zeno found solace in philosophy. He later quipped, “My most profitable journey began on the day I was shipwrecked and lost all my money.”

We can begin that journey, too, says Holiday. The Stoics, like us, knew how to cope with loss and political unrest, and about living in times when many people felt politically powerless, he says. He points to the example of Aurelius, a Stoic who became one of Rome’s greatest emperors, leading his country through a global pandemic that killed at least 10 million people and constantly wrestling with war and brutal political divisions.

“Aurelius lived through this devastating global pandemic that devastated society,” says Holiday, who just published “Right Thing, Right Now,” the third book in his best-selling series on Stoic virtue, “but he also saw what it could bring. [the pandemic] What it did to people: tribalism, fear, anger, and flights of fancy. He saw everything we’ve seen over the last few years.”

CNN spoke with Holliday and Massimo Pigliucci, author of “How to Be a Stoic: A Guide to Living Today with Ancient Philosophy,” two of the most popular modern interpreters of Stoic philosophy through books, videos and podcasts.

They offered three pieces of Stoic advice for dealing with the anxiety of this year’s election.

In politics, it’s useful to see ahead. Pollsters forecast trends. Pundits assess the potential impact of political gaffes. Party leaders evaluate the impact of court decisions. The future is uncertain.

But this anxiety spreads like an epidemic among voters. People worry about what will happen to them if the wrong candidate is elected, and some obsess over nightmare scenarios in which the country descends into civil war. The anxiety is reminiscent of Shakespeare’s famous line from “Julius Caesar”: “Cowards die a thousand times, but heroes die only once.”

But Stoics only die once, because they refuse to be attached to the future. Stoicism teaches people to distinguish between what they can control and what they can’t. Their advice is to avoid getting caught up in nightmare political scenarios that may or may not come true.

“The Stoics say that those who suffer before they have to suffer, suffer more than they have to,” Holliday says. “The idea of ​​waking up every day feeling miserable about something that may or may not happen is punishing yourself on top of the pain that will come from that thing actually happening.”

Pigliucci says the Stoics responded to the political turmoil of their time by focusing on what they could control: their emotions. He cites the “Serenity Prayer,” a common recitation in 12-step programs. The prayer, attributed to the great 20th-century Christian theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, asks God to “grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

“This seems like great advice for the next presidential election,” Pigliucci said. “Let’s have the courage to do our civic duty. Let’s vote, let’s donate, let’s volunteer for a campaign. And let’s accept the outcome as it comes, because what comes is what comes.”

You’ve probably met these types of people. They don’t vote because voting doesn’t make a difference. You might hear them complaining while sitting in a barber shop or at a barber’s stool. All politicians are corrupt. The Illuminati controls everything. Give me a beer.

Some people deal with election anxiety by distancing themselves from politics altogether. The ancient Athenians had a word for citizens who didn’t exercise their right to vote: they called them “idiotai,” from which the word “idiot” originated.

Many of the Stoic leaders would never be labeled “idiots”; they were committed to politics and the pursuit of justice.

This might surprise people: Stoicism has gotten a bad rap for the way it defines the word — someone who is “indifferent to pain or pleasure” and shows no “passions or emotions” — but ancient Stoic leaders would have been jousting on Sunday morning political talk shows and attending Black Lives Matter protests.

Holliday said Aurelius wrote frequently about justice in his classic work, Meditations.

“He talks about the public good over 80 times in Meditations,” Holliday says. “He talks about the public good more than anything else. He’s actually saying that the purpose of life is to have good character and to act in the public good.”

The stereotype of the Stoic as a calm, disinterested person is “about as wrong as it can get,” Holliday said.

“If you look at the actual lives of the Stoics, they were people who married, had families, ran for office, and fought for causes,” Holliday says. “There were generations of Stoics who were known as anti-Stoics because they were a constant thorn in the side of the emperor. They were all chased out of Rome at some point for not conforming to the worldly order.”

Cynicism can be a sign of cowardice. Some cynics fear the risks of getting involved. But Stoic leaders were known for their courage in standing up to political tyrants. Pigliucci tells a famous story of political courage, centering on the Stoic philosopher Helvidius Priscus.

When the Roman Emperor Vespasian threatened to execute the Stoic philosopher Priscus for speaking out against political tyranny, Priscus replied:

“Now, when did I say I was immortal? You do your part and I do mine. It is yours to kill me, and it is yours for me to die without trembling. It is yours to banish me, and it is yours for me to go without hesitation.”

It’s hard not to become cynical when it comes to the US presidential election. Candidates brazenly lie on the campaign trail. Partisan websites and social media platforms spread so much misinformation that it’s hard to know what to believe. Politicians who were once vocal opponents of certain candidates now bend over backwards to gain their support.

Dislike for political opponents can easily turn to hatred, but Holliday suggests considering how Emperor Aurelius dealt with political betrayal in his own time. Aurelius survived an attempted coup by his most trusted generals. He had unlimited power and could have devised any number of sadistic ways to torture or kill his traitors, but he refused to do so.

“Indeed, he wept when he was denied the opportunity to grant amnesty to his former enemies,” Holliday writes in an essay about Aurelius. “The best revenge, as Marx wrote, is ‘not to be like it.'”

If a family member or friend insults you or stops speaking to you because of your political differences, it’s easy to respond in kind. But the Stoics have two pieces of advice, says Holiday:

Please be kind.

That may sound naive, given that personal attacks have become commonplace in modern politics and this year’s presidential election, but as Epictetus said, “Anyone who can offend you is your master.”

“The Stoics said we should strive to see everyone we encounter as an opportunity for kindness,” Holiday writes in her new book.

On his deathbed, Aurelius had one regret, according to Holliday: he still blamed himself for earlier outbursts of anger that had led him to be unkind to others.

Holiday said he’s had to apply that Stoic advice to his own personal life. He’s become famous because he’s reportedly sold six million books on Stoicism, and he’s also built a mini-empire around it, including YouTube videos, an Instagram feed, and a Stoic newsletter.

His increased public attention has also created some personal problems: He says he and his family have been subjected to constant harassment for taking positions against book banning, in support of women’s rights and in favor of removing Confederate monuments; friends have betrayed him.

Holiday said his younger self would have “lusted for blood” for those who tried to harm him. Instead, he considered the actions of Stoic leaders like Aurelius and made a direct connection between the “dark energy” they faced back then and what he sees in the 2024 presidential election cycle.

“There are energies in every society, driven by hatred and fear, that want to protect what they have and stop other people from getting it,” Holliday told CNN, “and those energies were certainly present in Roman times.”

But there are solutions to that dark energy: While the Stoic leaders may seem like distant figures trapped in marble, Holliday says we can learn from them.

They wrestled with and ultimately defeated the same dark energies that drove the political tribalism of their time, and so can we.

John Blake is a senior writer at CNN. His award-winning memoir, “More Than You Think: What Black Men Discovered About Their White Mothers”