Almost everything today seems rooted in obsessive trivialities diverting people from any inclination to wonder what they're missing elsewhere. We get fast-paced snippets of real news, diluted with "nice to see you, what do you think about ..." Then, before the intro is barely completed, interviewees are interrupted with "Thanks for coming, sorry we're running out of time. Maybe we could continue this discussion some time again." But, shortage of time or not, next come interminable detailed reports of celebrity scandals, tragedies, pronouncements by currently-exalted personages, or on-call experts dragging out trivialities. Really important news is quickly forgotten.

Do we need to compare old-to-new by way of comparison to where we may be headed?

Movies and news productions used to include the standard ending of "fading to black" to signify "it's finished." Police and emergency services have a similar phrase, Code Black, to indicate that a death is involved.

Some people who have reported near-death experiences say they felt like they were floating above the scene of their medical emergency.They described watching everything taking place, yet they couldn't communicate with those trying to save them. Suddenly, at the last minute, they regained consciousness, and didn't become a Code Black statistic.

Lately it's easy to wonder if a societal Code Black is nearing certification. There's a feeling of watching scenes of all kinds, but floating above them, detached from reality, and knowing that the outcome is in others' hands. Society gives many indications of being near-death, but could more focused resuscitation efforts be successful?

Who can organize the efforts? The usual societal nurturers and organizers seem to have either abandoned the efforts, forgotten their responsibilities, or decided to make a bundle and adopt the suggestion of a frequently-seen ad: "Live a millionaire's lifestyle on your retirement income." That encompasses all the underpinnings of our society -- government, education, religion and the "press" in all its expanded aspects.

Newspapers have become "adver-papers" and are greatly aiding in advancing a "fading to black" timeline. Real and needed news is chopped up, agenda-driven, and picture-oriented. Advertising lineage is reaching smothering stage, joined by fat piles of inserts that never seem to get a rise out of environmentalists concerned about trees and overflowing landfills. In spite of the growing success of "alternative media" and e-mail exchanges, the fact remains that for one reason or another, many Americans get their "news" from "adver-papers,." and either reject other sources, don't know about other sources, or have no time or ability to access them.

TV is even worse. There is a noticeable drift toward all TV joining the slippery slope of sensationalism, celebrity overload, sex, violence and mocking of traditional societal underpinnings. It's too often vapid at best; -- raucous, uncouth, agenda-driven and celebrity-obsessed at worst. It, too, is overloaded with advertising -- advertising which reinforces societal slide and is so expensive that little else can afford the costs to provide sustaining balance in content.

The clues in news and entertainment continually float beneath the needed notice of countdown to Code Black. There's little opportunity to take them all together, instead of piecemeal where they fit around the edges of ads for lavish living, ads for thrill-seeking entertainment, and round-the-calendar sales. Comedians used to joke about Blue Light Specials -- short-lived opportunities for saving on an item or two. Today special sale ads and inserts are for everything in every store, new ones several times weekly. (Everything a bargain, except for large lists of tiny print exclusions.) Years of hype cloaked clues to the near-Code Black economic conditions. Now, almost everything tangible and saleable is shipped in from elsewhere on container ships. It's now soon to be delivered to your nearest mega-sale locations, courtesy of massive trucks racing on massive new highways, which will coincidentally speed up massive illegal immigration. That will escalate all its costs and downsides which completely overshadow any truly humanitarian concerns. The ad concern tie-ins? How can small businesses afford to buck the avalanches of corporate and agenda ads and stay in business. Then, who will or can pay the taxes to support the societal near-Code Black costs?

Who remembers, when reading of current massive drug problems, that they were warned about years ago? Now, legislators and educators are "worried -- something needs to be done." In the early '90's, the Department of Education put out such things as free 100--page curriculum copies for school classrooms, telling how to stop young people from taking drugs. Very expensive, very well-advertised, very ineffective in its approach. Solutions today are tasked to the very experts who crafted unsuccessful solutions more than once along the way. The problem was made much more insurmountable by the attention and money lavished on entertainment and sports which glorified societally-destructive behaviors. Laws carelessly crafted, enabled celebrities to walk, while lesser people were punished. It continues to this day -- witness the increasing numbers of celebrities breaking all the rules and piling up money and fans in the process, yet jails are crowded with lesser lawbreakers committing the same crimes.

Many problems suddenly (and belatedly!) catching attention have been waiting in the wings, and doing in-and-out "walk-ons" for years. There's only so much air-time or adver-news space. All the loose ends of problems shoved aside on a regular basis may have left society with the mistaken idea that when the spotlights faded, and coverage ended, all was well.

Wrong!

One political party complains about corruption and profiteering and amoral behavior and promises to end such behaviors if elected. No matter how many times the reins have switched hands to opposing parties, the roles and behaviors have continued so long that rooting out corruption is a meaningless phrase meaning "We'll get even later." It appears now that the plan is to work together to see how much more can be gotten away with. New "episodes" every week; new "series" every year. New scripts after all end-of-session breaks to campaign. Problems solved? Don't be ridiculous; can't knock success!

Americans, when they wax nostalgic, claim that the country was founded to escape from royal kings and queens who controlled their lives. True, we have no royalty, per se. We've done the royalty business one better! We have a growing society of royalty of a different kind. Money talks, and many people listen to the talk and walk the walk in order to get into the fast-growing ranks of the nouveau riche royalty in America. The people vote, but the new royalty skews the vote, in more ways than most of us can ever count. Those who are pushing society to the Fading to Black ending, have their own accounts comfortably well in the black, so to speak. They dominate news -- both in the board rooms of merged and re-merged outlets and in the subtle influences of content they dispense -- not to mention the laws they influence. They dominate politics because money attracts the money necessary to dominate the politics. They dominate the entertainment businesses that bring in the money to allow them to continue to dominate the entertainment content. They dominate education because they control the foundations and unions and training rules that drive the expansion of the influences of those who provide the money. They dominate the religious circles because money is the driving force needed to sustain the influence and real estate and ability to disperse the donations. They dominate the charities because they write the checks for the causes that the charities are wise to promote if they wish to continue to support all the works that the money wants supported. They dominate the health care industry because that's where the money comes from to dominate the health care, and to help shut out any competition.

Get the picture? Or are we all already herded into being kept so busy scrambling to keep up with the escalating emergencies that we can't cut through to rally to stop the impending Fading to Black?

Every day there are so many little problem brushfires that are visible, that the huge numbers of backdrafts feeding them don't stand out as drivers speeding up the time remaining before the last adver-reports or sales pitches or half-baked solutions to previous solutions that caused the problems.

Most of our problems might link to our love affair with "royalty", and the purposefully ingrained new fascination with the idea that with one more cave-in, one more abandonment of principle, one teeny little "why not?" might just put more of us in the growing extended family tree of latecomers to the royal lineage.

So, who's to blame? Those who milked the systems? Those of us who let them? Those of us who ignored the warnings or who were too busy helping with the milking to pay attention to details? Can we even recognize all the multiple causes and effects? We certainly can't, any of us, point them out (cause, effect, good possible endings) in one short column, to skim or scrutinize if you happen to see it.

Could it be that we thought so much of "the children" that we didn't care that they were the hook that was used to remove common sense and responsibility ability from adults? Were we so enthralled with living vicariously through them, pampering them, praising them, entertaining them, that we ceded authority to them? Now we have too many adults acting like children, and hoping to escape reality by doing so? We have adults made wealthy by acting like children, by milking systems and shutting the door behind them. Far worse is the fact that we have sent children out as substitute adults, to take center stage, to make decisions, to craft policy, and dominate center stages.

Every popular entertainment series -- good, bad or indifferent, soon reaches the "fading to black" time on the clock. They're replaced with something else. People can "partake" or not, if they choose. Societies, however, don't get the same choices once they finish "fading to black."

The article above was found on Google and was published originally on EtherZone.com