This tension exists in the West and in Eastern thought between pursuing individual enlightenment or being, you know, making the world a better place, basically, and helping mankind.

So the tension is, people would say, well, look, if you get to engage with public life and trying to help other people, you can kind of drag themselves crazy that way if you don't look after your own mental health.

You know, like you might start to get too worked up about the injustices that you perceive in society,

like too frustrated, too angry, you know, it can become quite unhealthy.

So you need to enlighten yourself in order to be able to help other people.

But if you spend too much time in a cave, meditating, trying to enlighten yourself,

it seems like you're not really healthy society at all.

Let's go.

Welcome to Citizen.

We've got a special guest today, Donald Robertson.

That's Donald Robertson.

That's your website.

All sorts of good information on there about stoics and things like that.

We'll get into all that soon.

But first, tell me where you grew up.

I grew up in Scotland, from the fact that I've got a funny accent

and my name sounds pretty Scottish as well.

But I can't even know why people think I'm Irish or something.

But no, I'm a Scot.

But I immigrated to Canada about a decade ago.

What would you say the difference between, like for the, um, the layman between

Scott, Scotch people and Irish people?

...