Billions of people are kept busy with trivial things. It is very destructive!

Is it a core strategy by the power elite or an unintended side-effect of the media industry, that billions of people are kept busy with trivial things? It is difficult to say but it has severe consequences. Before exploring the subject let us sort out the concepts of power elite, media industry, trivial and busy.

As a concept, "power elite" can be defined as a small group of people who control a disproportionate amount of power, wealth, and access to decision-makers in a political system. In my view, the number is probably less than one thousand people globally, and these consist of super rich families, since generations, that own the media industry, that is newspapers, magazines, TV networks, news sites, movie companies, advertising agencies, etcetera. They also control most of the major transnational corporations. Add to these the owners of relatively new tech corporations such as Facebook, Google, Instagram, Youtube, TikTok, Snapchat and several others.

Trivial means, among others, celebrity gossip, appearance fixation, personal dramas, "funny" video clips, recipes, fashion reports, crime news, commercials, and a whole range of superficial entertainment programs on TV and internet.

By busy, I mean that a substantial part of people's free time is occupied by trivial things.

In a world full of critical global challenges and hundreds of different types of serious societal problems, a majority of the population should be engaged in daily dialogues that concern our present situation, future visions and a radical transformation of society. These dialogues should take place at dinner tables, at work, at institutions, at political gatherings and various digital meetings on social media. This is not the case today, and if it occasionally happens, the discussions are filled by conflicts, misunderstandings, polarization, bullying and lack of knowledge and insights.

Humanity of today is like watching Titanic with passengers eating fancy meals in fancy suits and dresses, discussing trivial things, while the ship is approaching a deadly iceberg. Or like fat, lazy and decadent Romans at the end of the Roman Empire when they believed that they were the world's elite and that they could have and enjoy everything they wanted forever.

Honestly, the world population cannot any longer continue attending to trivial things, but must start mobilizing and change the focus to important activities that lead to a truly sustainable society. The most important one is to discuss wisdom development, that means building our inner infrastructure, so that we, as a collective humanity, can get better at foreseeing, understanding and acting on all kinds of challenges in a long-term and favorable way for all involved.