 Yeah, welcome back to Think Tech. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Community Matters. When you talk about creating your own world today, on the notion that you can be happy, on your lifelong journey, that's no small thing. And for this, we're gonna talk to Charles Tuftoy. He's retired Army, retired academic. And let's see what else we got. A little bit in the corporate world. And he spent some time in the corporate. Welcome to the show, Charles. Nice to have you back. Yeah, thanks, Jay. I was looking forward to it. Always good to see you. Well, you've written books, and now you're working on something called Create Your Own World. And I wanna know more about that because you do that because many things in the world cause you and us to become depressed, disappointed and stressed. And some of these are misinformation, disinformation, problems with cybersecurity, gun control, political divisiveness. We talk about that all the time. Climate change, we worry about that all the time. And racism, among other things. So tell me, Charles, do these things affect you? Are they high priority? Are you depressed? I'm not depressed because I created my own world, Jay, which is what I'm gonna explain today. And basically, I got this idea from people. So I ran a discussion group and I've given a couple of talks on it where it's a good crowd and I make it sort of rather than a presentation type of thing that we're used to, I draw them into it. In other words, what depressed is you? And I copy all that down and I have a list of things from those groups. Here's the big picture and you hit on it already. The world is unstable and complex. That's a given. That bothers people, especially in the unstable arena where we do face things that you brought up. And here are some of the things that the people have been bringing up. Oh, by the way, the reason I tackled this is I noticed, like you said, people are anxious, depressed and that leads to stress. They can't sleep at night and that kind of thing and that's why I took off on this. But they came up with a number of things and you hit on misinformation and disinformation. And of course, disinformation is where it's intentional. They intentionally give you wrong facts and everything else. And misinformation is just not back-gathered that are correct necessarily anybody's fault. And so I'll tell you what, I began after working on this for a while and the feedback has been tremendous on this. That's why I've continued it and I'll develop it into a book now because of the people basically. And but misinformation and disinformation to me are sort of up at the top of this list. I'm gonna give you that the people that I got from the people are because, gosh, what can we believe on TV? What can we believe in the newspaper when you read something? Did that really happen? Is this guy that they're writing about? Did he really do those things? He might not have done anything, but you know, and then of course some of the foreign countries get into this. They hack in and they come up with, hey, this guy's no good, vote for Jim. You don't want Frank. I mean, Frank's done all these things. Actually, Frank hadn't done any of those things. So and of course, Russia's one of them that really is big time in it and some of the other countries. So that was one of them. And just quickly to save time, a political divide. People are very upset that the Congress is divided. You know, there's a division there and that it's red against blue. And I mean, that should never happen. And it never happened when I was young. I want to talk about that, Charles, because I feel the same way you do. And a lot of my friends who were roughly my age feel that way. And we lived in a better time. We lived in a time, I'll even include the time of Vietnam when people didn't have these problems. When if you asked them to list what was bothering them, these things would not be on that list. It was a better world, at least in the United States at that time. And now you and I are at a time and we can look back down the road and we can make the comparison for the way it was when we were younger and look at what's happening today. And it is very troubling what's happening today. And I assume you agree with that, but I wonder if you could tell me why all these things have popped up to make us so depressed, disappointed and stressed. I think it's the quality of people in Congress. Now, there's some wonderful people in Congress, so I'm sure maybe one or two Congressmen are listening to this. I might not mean you, but we don't really have the statesmen or stateswomen anymore. Like, you know, we had, whether you liked them or not, we had Stassen and we had Humphrey. You know, I can remember not to drag this out, but I can remember walking down Massachusetts Avenue and I looked in the window of this restaurant right against the glass was Humphrey and Stassen talking together, Democrat and Republican. And I'm sure they were talking about issues, but what's missing, you ask for that is compromise, genuine compromise. It almost seems like if I'm a Democrat and I have a bill that I present and it's really good. I mean, it's good for the country and everything else, but let's just say you're a Republican, you vote it down. You know what I mean? We didn't have that before in our day to get to your point. We had a leveling of interest and we would compromise. If I liked your bill better than whatever the Democrats put up, I would vote for it. And vice versa, now no can do, you know? And that's very naive, it's very unprofessional and ethics get into here too. And we really didn't have that. We had some solid people there that if they were alive today, we wouldn't be where we are. You know, they wouldn't have some of these people elected, you know, they'd put it down, snuff it out in their own way. But so they kind of, the people in the interviews and discussions that I've been based with call it political divide. They don't like the political divide. It drives them crazy and they think about it and they think that their vote doesn't count, Jay. I agree with them in the sense that they're disturbed by all this, and I appreciate the fact that you've done sort of a personal serving on it. But what's the subset of people you're talking to? Are they in Arlington, Virginia? Are they in the East Coast, West Coast, in the South, in the North? Where do you make contact and ask people how they feel about these things? Well, this is a good question, this is a Washington DC metro area that I'm dealing with, but the group discussions are a very diverse group of various races, various career fields. So there's a good diversity there, which of course in any, it's not really a survey, it's more of groups discussions, but the more the mix you have, the better it is. Otherwise, it's just stereotype, you know, and so political divide, gun violence comes up, Jay, up there on the top of the list, they're really upset. Now, when I was in Vietnam as a US Army Ranger, I mean, I carried AR-15 and an M2 carbine. Finally, I got rid of them and used the AK-47, which is the Chinese-made weapon. And of course, there's a few reasons for that, but I don't wanna get in any war stories, but it has a great accuracy and great knockdown punch. And also when you fire that, the enemy doesn't realize that it's like from an American because of the sound, but AR-15 has a sound, M2 carbine. They know, oh, that's Americans, let's go get them. But when an AK-47 goes off, we don't need people having AK-47s in this country walking around and automatic weapons. So if I was president, one of the first things I do is I would ban assault weapons. You don't need an assault weapon to bring a deer down, you know, so we don't need that. And if you look at some of these crimes, like schools, which is very upsetting, you know, that your kid's going to school and a little bit afraid to go to school. And even teachers, you know, that how, who would have we know here might have a gun with them? You know, Jay, so we got first step is we've got to get rid of assault weapons. There's no need for them. Maybe if you're a soldier and the infantry like I was, you needed one, well, you sure did. We don't need it here. Got to calm things down and got to have terms for that. I don't mean to get off here, but... So let me give you a couple of reactions from what you've said so far. Number one, and we talk about this on Think Tech a lot, is that over the past few decades, we have learned not to care about each other. We have learned not to care about the country. You know, I grew up in the notion that the government is us and we are the government. It's all connected. And I was actually sad to see this draft terminated. I thought the drafts was an important connection between the country and the military, but hey, they had their political reasons. The other reaction I want to mention to you was that if you say create your own world, and let's say, and I think this is pretty close on, that I agree with all the points you've made so far, and that means probably all the points you will make on what and what is of concern here in this country now. Yeah. And so you say create your own world, but the problem is, and COVID has certainly influenced this, is that we are more isolated than we have really been in our lifetimes from others. And I appreciate you coming on the show and talking about it. I appreciate having this conversation with you, but the reality is a lot of us don't have this conversation and do not connect up with other people, and we are in silos and personal silos. So when you talk about create your own world, I hope Charles, that you're not talking about maintaining a silo. I hope you're talking about connecting. Yeah, I'm talking about connecting also, and I'm glad you brought up that point because I was gonna bring it up later. I don't mean that in create, but do we wanna skip some of these other things that bothers the people and go to what I'm talking about, create your own world? No, let's hear the rest of them and then we'll talk about create your own world. Yeah, I'll just whip down and then I'll go to, then because of these problems that are causing you, the people, to not sleep at night and get depressed and not be happy. See, 19% of these people in the country, our country, are unhappy, okay? That, you know, they're unhappy people and it's actually greater than that because 77% of women fake being happy, and let's see, what percentage of 86%, excuse me, of women's fate being happy, 77% of men fake it. So you got 19% unhappy in this country and then others just may be saying, yes, I'm happy, but I'm really not, but I have to tell you I'm happy. So it's a kind of a fake thing. Problem is, and the reason to create your own world is you wanna be happy, Jay. I mean, we wanna be happy in this world no matter what we're doing and I don't mean that you develop a cocoon like you're leading to and forget the main, mainstay, mainstream. I'm not saying you go over here, create your own world and forget about the mainstream America. I, well, let's run down some of these other things to bother the people and then what led me to create your own world. And then I'll tell you a suggestion is to create your own world and be happy. And so your wife or spouse or friends are happy because you're happy. People are only happy if they get with you and they see you're happy, it spills off on them and we need that more the spilling effect of our self-confidence, which it gives you when you're happy, you're self-confident. And when you're happy, you have more faith in yourself and that leads to hope, which we all need today. We need to believe in hope. Okay, we talked about gun violence, racism, cyber attack. One comment that I have to make there because each one of these is gonna be a chapter. You know, each one of these topics we're talking about now are gonna be a chapter, but what we need to do in cyber, by the way, cyber attack can shut us down. You've seen some movies that like M5, well, no, M5, did you see that TV series? No. Check it out, that's what can really happen. There's a lot of truths in that one. So we're shut down, you go to the grocery store and they have to do everything manually at the checkout counter, et cetera. But what we need to do, Jay, just like we gotta get rid of assault guns, it's basic. It's 101 again. We need to build a firewall that's invincible in this country so that we're not shut down because they're getting so good. And I'm not talking about spam at hackers getting in there, but it's getting worse. The artificial intelligence, which is another topic they came up with, immigration control, drugs, human trafficking, healthcare, economy, COVID pandemic, foreign relations, crimes local. That bothers them, there's so many local crime. Poor customer service. And here's a good one that I'll never forget this guy in the audience. He said, I worry about understandability using up resources. We are, we're, see, what is it? We're 34 trillion in debt, this country is. Did you know that? I mean, a lot of that Ukraine, and that's some of these other things, which I remember a person mentioning in the discussion group, she was worried that where our money goes, that you hear about $3 billion missing somewhere, and it was supposed to go to X, but it didn't go to X country for whatever. And then Gaza and the Ukraine war, that's the bother. Okay, this is the complex world, Jay. When you meet with these people, Charles, what's the good news? Do they ever stand up at these meetings and say, you know, I'm really happy about this phenomenon or this series of events, or is it all just, I'm unhappy and I have a gripe about all these things? On this sheet, it says, at the end, I give them time, please list several things that upset you, causing anxiety, possible depression, stress, then list things that make you happy. And so then they fill this out. And it's interesting, but the creating your own world, and I have to make it really clear because sometimes people don't understand it. I don't mean what, like you were alluding to for, which was a good question, what I was talking about not getting in a cocoon and forgetting about everything else. What I'm saying is, do what you love to do and that you have a passion for because life is short, Jay. We've got to be happy. I mean, if we're not happy, I don't know what we're doing then. So some of the things that we've come up with, the things that you're passionate about and you love, that's what you need to be doing. When you're not knowing your main job, if you're retired, then you can do this 100% of the time. Reading nature, gardening, travel, church, eating out at the restaurant, family and friends at it. Like I've got two Yorkshire Arteriors. And I mean, they're a big part of my life, you know? They keep you happy. Music, whatever your favorite music is, hiking, writing, which I love to do. See what else have we got here? Okay, hobbies, reading and then, you know, any games, Sudoku, Crossroad Puzzles, those kind of things. So I guess what we're talking about there is that you create your own world in the things that you love the most and spend your time there when you're not doing the main strain. I don't- But Charles, let me push back on that. Yeah. You have identified, and your groups have identified a significant list of troubles here, some of which are going to get us. They're going to affect us. They're going to destroy our civil society if we don't watch out. And of course, it's up to everyone to do his or her part to try to prevent that kind of destruction. But when you say, create your own world, when you say, do what you love to do and be happy, it sounds to me like you're saying, ignore these existential threats all around you. Don't participate in the correction of these problems. Don't participate in the discourse which calls these problems out and tries to correct them. Where does that come? You know, we start out with the premise of all these problems that people worry about, but your solution doesn't include dealing with them. Explain. No, no, Steve, that's good point. That's exactly what I'm saying, that if you are worried about, I mean, we have an energy problem. So if you want to get with an energy group or consult with them or do volunteer work, do that because that makes you happy because you want the energy, that's your big thing, let's say. Sure, go ahead and do that. That's part of your creating your own world. That's part of it. I don't mean that you get away from mainstream. I mean, what I'm talking about things like, don't let these things keep cracking your mind. When I get into my car now, there's only music on, Shay. There's not, this is seven on your side, here's the world who's breaking it anymore. I don't get the Washington Post anymore. And as a kid around here, I used to deliver 750 Washington Post every morning because I don't want to see all that stuff. So it takes self-discipline, but boy, you feel real good about it. But if I'm, if I want to be a member of an organization that's out to help wildlife, save the elephants for something, I might give to that cause to make use, taking that one out of the blue. And then I might have an elephant sticker on my car. I don't, but I'm just using that one. And that makes you happy, though, because I'm saving elephants, I'm saving animals. I'm helping at the pets, I'm helping at the pet refuge place where these dogs need care. So it doesn't mean you get out from the mainstream of life. I mean, even though I get a summary every morning, five paragraphs of the main things going on worldly that I need to know about, whether it's political or military or whatever. And when I take the world quiz of 10 questions on Friday, the end of the week, I usually get eight, nine or 10 out of 10. And so it does, so I'm in my own world. I've created the world. My wife was talking about this morning that she really likes that. Because she even said, I'm supposed to go to this function and I don't want to go. I said, well, don't go. She said, okay, I'm doing your, create your own world then. So it's just, you gotta be happy, Jay. And so if you are happy to do the things you just said, cause that's a great point where I have to keep reminding people, I don't mean you turn your back on everything and that I got my little world, gardening, my pets, cause you know, the things you really love to do. Maja with some of the women play here, they got five women, they get together three times a week. Fine, that's great, that's part of it. Cause they're happy when they're doing that. Well, let me, let me sort of connect some of the dots. You talked about the media and it's hard to avoid misinformation and disinformation, you know, not only in the US, but around the world. And it's hard to know what's true. And here we are in the middle of, what's going to be a 10 month election cycle with campaign candidates trying to influence us, get them to send us to send money, get us to vote for them and so forth. And it's cacophony, I'm sure you will agree. It's cacophony and it's very disturbing and you really hate it in many ways. I'm sure that if you talk to your constituents out there, they would say, I really hate it. I don't want to be part of that. I wish it would go away already. We spend much too much time on it. But the reality is we have an obligation to vote. We have the right to vote. It's threatened in some places in some ways, but we really have to do that to preserve the democracy. So the elephant in the room here is Trump versus Biden. And they're on two sides of a divide for sure. And we all have, really all of us have strong feelings, except maybe some of the independence. And but how do you deal with that when you are building your own world? Are you turning that off? Are you listening to them? Are you listening to the media that reports about them? Are you making your mind up as a literate informed citizen? Are you voting to exercise your right and your obligation? How does all of this fit in an election cycle which is more troubling than any I can remember in my lifetime? Well, you have to, like I said, turn that TV off. People are struggling to sleep these days. That's a big thing now. And the reason is, is they watch the news. You shouldn't watch news after eight o'clock at night. And, you know, I don't watch the news anymore on TV. I used to, I was on it all the time, getting in my car, the news, no more of that. But, you know, and I'm happy. You can't be happy if, and here's my big point in my amazing fireside talk book, which gets to a lot of this too. If you can't make an impact on something, it's a waste of your energy to spend time on it. So why should I hear these people yapping about how people feel about Trump or Biden and all that kind of stuff? I think it's a waste of your time because it's on your mind and it's driving you nuts. Don't let it drive you nuts. Just turn it all off. And like I said, it takes self-discipline to do that. Because like a lot of people, Jay, I used to walk in my car and boom, the news was right on, you know. Also, it's a little distracting when you're driving as opposed to my car, when you get in there, it's escape, spa or the 50s music, one of those three, and that's it. Well, ultimately, you do want to go into the polling place and stand in the election and pull the right levers, you and 340 million others. And you wanna do the right thing because arguably if one of these candidates gets into office, he's gonna be an old fashioned dictator and make our lives miserable and destroy our constitution. And the other one, not, the other one will try to do the right thing. And so the effect of that election is huge on all of us. And I'm not sure that we can fully appreciate it. I mean, I can and you can, I won't ask you your persuasion, but I think a lot of people need to be fully informed and they are not fully informed. And if you let them go into that booth without being fully informed, we're all asking for trouble. Yeah, I'm with you 100% there. And when you say fully informed, it is some of that information misinformation or disinformation too, that's one of the problem. But you and I really talk straight and we talk turkey to each other. So I wasn't gonna get into this, but Colin Powell was my ranger buddy in the army. And so we've known each other a long time. And so let's try not to have Trump on my mind. I'm kind of down the middle. My wife always says, whether it's a local vote or national vote, state vote, who should we vote for? I said, just vote for the best or the worst. And you know, we, but Colin Powell told me, I said, what do you think of Trump? And I usually never ask questions like that because I try to get out of the political party. And he said, he's a liar. That's all he said. So he got to ask yourself, whether you're Republican or Democrat, you got to forget that and think of the country and all the people that died in this country for freedom and democracy. All those people died, civil war, the First World War, Second World War, Vietnam, Korea, all those other going all the way back in the history of this country. They're six feet under. They fought for freedom and democracy. I don't know if you want to have an authoritarian type of government and not have a democracy anymore. And that's what you get on the one side. And on the other side, you're safe. Anyway, do you really want allies to leave us because of who the new president is and wind up in the splendid isolation like Great Britain found themselves years ago will be isolated. And you know, usually that leads to self-destruction. And, you know, I can give you many, you know, doing that book on blunders that we talked about last time. I can give you a lot of examples. You can probably give me more of countries that went under because of the despot, you know. Well, to try to bring it together because we didn't have much time left, is it seems to me I would go back to my earlier comment about caring. I think the people have to care. And a part of no part of happiness, part of love is caring. So if I'm caring, not only about my neighbor, my family, a guy down the block, human beings in general, Americans, Americans. And I use that term in the fullest possible sense in the sense of World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Normandy, Normandy, the cemetery, you know, all your experience in a career in the Army. And I was in the service too, so I understand that. You've got to care about everybody. Not sure you're gonna disagree, but you're gonna disagree in a civilized fashion. But you're gonna care about the entity, the country, the people, the principles and all that. And I think, I don't wanna tell you what to put in your book, Charles. I just wrote it down, caring. You just gave me a good lead. But if I care about people and I feel they care about me, I'm in a better place and I'm much happier. Yeah. Well, treat others the way you wanna be treated yourself. Wasn't like there's no excuse for the Bible. When you come right down to it, there's no excuse for the Ukraine or Russia war. No excuse for that. Yeah. I think maybe our diplomats were, maybe we exhausted our diplomacy power, but they're sleeping at the switch or something, but we needed to keep that from happening. I mean, what is Russia doing? They're bombing building. Is there not bombing military targets? They're destroying the infrastructure, the women, grandmothers, babies. I mean, my gosh, it's, there should be when that thing is over, something like the Nuremberg trials because they're at war criminals, you know. Well, it's something you said a little while ago. It's like, if you have the right state of mind and people see that, you're a moral ethical leader. You're a leader in happiness. You're a leader in caring. Caring. And so I think it's infectious what you're talking about. And I think that if the United States wants to be the city on the hill and be the beacon for the world as it was after World War II, then we have to set a standard, set a model, set an example. And that would be caring because caring and happiness are all the same. And if you showed the people of Russia, for example, that it's better to care about their fellow citizen, it's better to care about their neighbors and the world, maybe they'll change, but we have to set the example. But we only have a minute left, Charles. And I wanna offer you the opportunity to summarize this and give whatever wisdom you want to our viewers. Well, I took some notes there on your caring. So maybe this needs to be changed to create your own caring world. But I guess the bottom line in this whole thing is the general picture is that the world's unstable, certainly, unfortunately, our country's unstable, but it's very complex, but you can't let it worry you. You've gotta put that over here and have your world, but keep a tab on it. Like you were saying, don't create your own caring world. I hope you let me use that now. Of course. I'm gonna use caring throughout this book now. Well, I always feel that our best shows, we get a Homer, that's a homerun. So I always feel that our best shows. The bottom line comes out of the amazing fireside talk book, which was two books ago. And that was the self-help book. And in there again, just as a repeat, but don't spend your time and worry about things that you cannot impact or as a waste of your energy. It really is. People think it's just, I see them where they're almost shaking about this political scene, whether they're one side or the other. We need to vote and people have fought for us to be able to vote today. They died fighting for freedom and democracy. Charles, we've gotta go, we're out of time. Thank you very much. Charles Taftai, a man with three careers behind him, a man who really appreciates and talks with the community and who is spending his time doing what he loves to do, writing, thinking, reading, and appearing on Think Tech. Thank you so much, Charles. Thank you, Jay. I salute you for all you do. I salute you back. Charles Taftai. Aloha. Aloha.