November 2023: Join The ConVersation
Let the Conversation begin
The Founder’s Reflection
Happy Thanksgiving! I am always grateful to this country that designates a day each year to gratitude. Through my years spent on preventing human trafficking with the Long Beach Human Trafficking Task Force, Men Standing Against Trafficking, See it. End it. Film & Arts Festival, traveling upstream to what is creating the vulnerability that allows our children to be preyed upon and recruited by traffickers, I found one element that impacted both the supply and demand sides of human exploitation, entitlement. The feeling of being entitled to more than I currently have; feeling I deserve better, more of what will please me, contributes to both the depression and anger so prevalent today. If you deserve something you don’t have, then someone is to blame, a person or a system is making you a victim of your desires unmet. This leads to justification to take what will make up for what is missing.
Nothing ignites this sense of entitlement more than the devices, the “brothel in your pocket” as Tom Perez of the Epik Project calls it, with 24/7 access to hard core pornography. Porn today is as far from reality as can be, and yet young people are going to free porn sites to learn about what to expect in bed, in love, in life. This is a petri dish growing a culture of justification to take, and to accept being exploited. Entitlement diminishes gratitude for what you have by nudging you to dwell on what you lack. Porn and advertising are constantly reminding you what you should want and could have. Gratitude is the super-power that sucks the wind out of entitlement and the subsequent justified actions that self-harm and bring harm to others. However you celebrate, with turkey or kimchi, sushi or pot roast, please, let your heart be filled with Thanks Giving. God bless you and your families during these turbulent times, and embrace those you love.
Patrick Erlandson, Founder: Father-Con, and See it. End it. Film & Arts Festival