June is National Online Safety Month in the U.S.  Every day children are lured away by predators using every method available to them, including the Internet.  Be aware of your children’s online activities and educate them.  Watch the film below, share it with your family and friends.

The Candy Shop from Whitestone Motion Pictures on Vimeo.

Further information here.

The written history of humans generally goes back six or seven thousand years, depending on who you ask. It’s a solid record of how cultures, knowledge, science and religions developed. But scientists tell us that homo-sapiens reached its modern evolutionary state approximately 50,000 years ago. If that’s correct, then humans fifty thousand years ago had the same brain capabilities as humans today. So then, what were humans doing for 40,000+ years? Did it really take modern man that long to develop any sort of language or technology? Just look at what we’ve accomplished in the past five thousand years. We have gone from tribes to computers and space travel. Imagine where we will be in just a short 10,000 years.

It seems almost implausible to suggest that humans sat around as modern man for over 40,000 years with no technology. Are we to believe that humans, with their ability to reason, remained wandering bands of hunter/gatherers for forty thousand years then rather suddenly in the past six or seven thousand years went from zero tech to where we are today?

There are several hypotheses for this glaring gap in human development:

1. Scientific conclusions about the age of homo-sapiens is wrong and there is simply no forty thousand year gap because homo-sapiens is not that old.
2. Mankind is only 6,000 years old according to certain interpretations of Biblical histories which explains why there is no earlier examples of human technology.
3. Humans really weren’t that bright and extra-terrestrial influence gave us a jump-start by providing knowledge and tech.
4. Humans have in the past developed advanced tech, most likely beyond what we currently have, but that tech was almost entirely lost to some catastrophe.

To me, the most probable answer is option four. Ancient humans had 40,000 years to develop. It seems likely they could reach our level of technology very easily if we did it in less than 10,000 years. But what could have happened ten or fifteen thousand years ago that could wipe out a high tech civilization? Assuming the society didn’t simply destroy itself, consider that the last ice age reached its peak glaciation about 18,000 years ago. We don’t know for certain just how quickly and to what extremes the climate changed during the last ice age.

Is it possible that human society was at some point in the past more advanced than it is currently and that society was destroyed so completely that no archaeological traces of it have been found? I think it’s possible. Archaeologists are still finding new remnants from civilization 6,000 years ago and there hasn’t been a globe altering, disaster to civilization glacier advance and retreat since then. It’s very likely that if any evidence of such a civilization exists, we simply haven’t dug deep enough or looked in the right place.

It is possible that the tech of such societies as the Mayans and Egyptians could have evolved from the knowledge of the original survivors of the devastated society. For example, I know about architecture, but not enough to build great structures. I know about computers but not enough to build one from scratch. I couldn’t make even one of the essential parts. I know about metals, but I don’t know how to identify them to mine them, much less smelt them. Even now our technology has advanced far beyond the complete understanding of those who use it.

If our society and technology was wiped off the face of the Earth, along with the majority of our population, I would think most of the people would gather together into tribes based on their general location. People would live in rudimentary housing due to the lack of advanced tools and even the ability to make the tools they were used to at the time. An advanced society may have been beyond pencils and paper and even making those things was a lost art.

After many generations, the memories of the old societies would just be stories, even myths, as the homo-sapiens begin again. There may come a time when all that we have discovered, all our technology is lost to humanity. There may come a time when there is no record of our existence at all.

A short film coming out in November brings to focus the subject of child sexual exploitation. Keep up with the details at stopthecandyshop.com

The Candy Shop Trailer from Brandon McCormick on Vimeo.

I want to start off by saying that I don’t like bullies. Deriving pleasure from ridiculing and intimidating others is not healthy. It’s a bad behavior that can be addressed and modified. In my opinion it should be treated like any other mental illness.

Bullies and being bullied have existed since the dawn of society. Not all bullying is even done by “real” bullies. Depending on your level of sensitivity, you might consider something bullying that the next person considers harmless horseplay. When I was in the military, my squad put new members through what was to me, harmless hazing. This ranged from something as benign as sending them on a wild goose chase for an ST-1 and then laughing at them once they figure it out (stONE, any rock or pebble) to more physical acts such as holding the member upside down and everyone giving him a “pepper belly” by many sharp stinging slaps to their bare stomach.

Obviously, different people are affected differently by those actions. But the underlying intent was a bonding experience. While some consider hazing as bullying, its generally not done by people who are bullies. Although I agree that extreme hazing is also unhealthy, the idea of a “rite of passage” can be a unifying common experience.

In college, people pull pranks on each other. Friends get drunk together and draw on their passed out friends’ faces. Is it the nicest thing to do? No. Is having unflattering pics of you passed out drunk passed around on social networks nice? No. Is it bullying? Some may say yes others may say no. Are those who do it bullies? I doubt it. There is a definite distinction between wanting to hurt someone and having fun as someone else’s expense.

Society sends mixed messages about that: viral videos of people pranking others, TV shows where people get punk’d, celebrity “roasts” where the more harsh your comments the more funny they are. On many levels we glorify laughing at others, making fun of them, or putting them in embarrassing situations. While this is all in good fun, sometimes people cross the line. Are those people bullies? It depends on their motives of course, but not everyone who goes too far is a bully. Some just have a lack of judgment. A condition that is not uncommon in college kids for certain.

Let me be clear, I am not defending actions done with malicious intent seeded by hatred: beating up people because of their sexual preferences, burning crosses in people’s yards, and a plethora of similar actions. There is a difference in bullying and hate crimes. They are not the same.

When I grew up, there were bullies. Some people learned to stand up to them, some people didn’t. However I do not recall people killing themselves over it. Maybe it was because there wasn’t a 24 hour news cycle and there wasn’t an Internet when I was a kid. Yet, there was such a thing in 2000, and in 2005, but we didn’t hear about people killing themselves because they were bullied. So why is it happening now?

Is it possible that suicides have increased as a response to bullying because the media and the government have made a big production about trying to prosecute bullies and blame them for the deaths? In the minds of some, do they think that killing themselves is a way to strike out at their bullies? Bullying is an undesirable behavior, but it’s not murder.

Trying to hold bullies accountable for suicides is not the solution, and may in fact prompt additional suicides. We don’t like bullies, we never have. However the intent of a bully is not to cause anyone’s death and I don’t think trying to pin suicides on them is the right answer.

The media is sending a message: if you kill yourself, the bullies will be prosecuted and vilified. If you kill yourself, strangers will mourn you and society will avenge you by punishing the bully to the fullest extent that it can.

There are many factors that go into a suicide. There are many variables that contribute to the final decision to take one’s own life. In the case of the college boy who jumped from a bridge, the fact he was filmed in a private moment may have been a variable, but it’s certainly not the only one. Are we going to pursue everyone who contributed in some manner to this decision? Should we hold others accountable for the choice made by an individual to take their own life? Do we really know that person’s motives for their suicide?

Ultimately, the only one that can be held accountable for a suicide is the one who commits the act. In the case of the college boy who jumped from a bridge, it’s certainly sad to consider someone is pained so much that they take their own life. Can we fairly place full blame for his decision on the two that invaded his privacy? I don’t think so. It may have been the “last straw” in a string of events over time that pushed him over the edge. If that’s the case, everyone who contributed to that point is also to blame.

Obviously I do not know the details of this specific case, and I am only speculating, however I think we as a society should refrain from rushing to crucify bullies or even people who do an insensitive and stupid thing to someone thinking it would be funny. Again, I do not support hate crimes against anyone, but every person who kills themselves is not a victim of a hate crime.

You can blame media glamorizing, you can blame society intolerance, you can blame bullies for their anti-social behavior, but in the end, the boy was alone when he jumped.

Why he did it we may never fully know.  What we do know is that he did it and that was his choice.  If instead of jumping from a bridge, he went out and bought a shotgun and went back to his dorm and shot the young man and woman in the face, would we be blaming them for his actions?  I don’t think so.

As adults we are responsible for our own action, even if that action is taking our own life.

The Tao Te Ching (Daodejing) is the second most translated book in the world today.  Let’s take a look at a handful of translations of a particular part of Chapter 57 and see if we can determine what is being expressed:

Beck: The more restrictions there are, the poorer the people.

Chan: The more taboos and prohibitions there are in the world, The poorer the people will be.

Hansen: The more the social world has to elude, the more the people are impoverished.

Legge: In the kingdom the multiplication of prohibitive enactments increases the poverty of the people.

Mitchell: The more prohibitions you have, the less virtuous people will be.

Ta-Kao: The more restrictions and avoidances are in the empire, The poorer become the people.

This is not an opposition to all law.  Certainly a society will have to take measures to protect the populace from harm.  Those who cause physical injury to others and pose any threat to continue causing harm must surely be removed from the opportunity to continue.  Laws create an authority to do this.  An authority granted by the people to further their ability to live together in harmony.

Our society today, however, goes far beyond this, to an absurd extreme.  Our prisons are overflowing.  Why is that?  Are there so many dangerous people today?  Put in a DVD and read the initial legal threat.  If you copy this, if you play it in a public place, you are breaking the law and you are subject to massive fines and five years imprisonment.  We send people to prison for theft of “intellectual property”.  In 2001, a Federal Prisoner cost taxpayers an average of $22, 632.  That’s $113,160 just to punish someone for “stealing” something that, if purchased, would have cost $20.  Let’s also not forget that health care for prisoners increases  in cost about 10% annually.

In 1998, the U.S. “nonviolent prisoner population, alone, is larger than the combined populations of Wyoming and Alaska.”

The majority of the non-violent prisoners are being held because of drug use/possession.  Consider this.  In 2007, According to the American Corrections Association, the average daily cost per state prison inmate per day in the US is $67.55.  State prisons held 253,300 inmates for drug offenses in 2007. That means states spent approximately $17,110,415 per day to imprison drug offenders, or $6,245,301,475 per year.

Six billion dollars a year of taxpayer money to keep non-violent criminals locked up.  The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world at 754 persons in prison or jail per 100,000 (as of 2008).  Another interesting fact:  in 2002, bout 10.4% of all black males in the United States between the ages of 25 and 29 were sentenced and in prison, compared to 2.4% of Hispanic males and 1.3% of white males.

Six billion dollars a year could go a long way towards helping the population.  Providing more training and opportunity for adults, education for children, etc.  Not to mention you have millions of people who have felony imprisonment on their records, even further limiting their opportunities when they are released.

We have reached a level of litigation where the average American breaks numerous laws every day.  From simple traffic laws such as speeding, to even more serious crimes like copyright infringement and illegal gambling (office sports pools are quite common).  There are laws governing ideas and general concepts now.  One doesn’t need to actually be innovative if they can work the system to gain a general patent on something.  They need only sit back and wait for someone to do something somewhat similar to what their patent describes.  Or better yet, get your patent then go out and find people who are already doing things which you might be able to link to your general patent.

These “laws” amount to nothing more than extortion. Instead of promoting ideas, ideas are being “locked up” behind patents and copyrights.  The opportunities for the populace are being limited to those who understand the laws more.

Year after year, billions of dollars are  spent to enforce growing restrictions on what we can do and say, cranking out new felons by the thousands and depositing them into society with less opportunities which translates to more dependencies.

All under the guise of protecting the people.