(FORTUNE Magazine) – You recall the famous experiment in which researchers offered marshmallows to 4-year-olds. One by one each child was brought into a room, given a single marshmallow, and told he could eat it. But, said the researcher, I'll be back in five minutes, and if you still have the marshmallow when I return, I'll give you another one. Eat the marshmallow or save it--it's up to you.

The researchers then tracked the lives of those kids for years afterward. Chief finding: The kids who didn't eat the marshmallow were more confident, had more friends, got better grades, and got better jobs. Is anyone really surprised?

We have become a nation that can't resist eating the marshmallow, and like those 4-year-olds, we'll pay a price down the road. The tendency has been advancing for years and just lately has emerged in a couple of high-profile and alarming ways.

The presidential race has revealed that while politicians want to talk about Iraq, jobs, and President Bush's National Guard meetings, many voters would rather talk about health care and Social Security. Their worry is definitely valid: If you can figure out how millions of aging baby-boomers are going to have their medical care and retirement paid for, please e-mail AARP headquarters immediately. Starting soon, the boomers will desperately need the second marshmallow. Trouble is, they've already eaten the first one.

Specifically, America's savings rate has plunged to the lowest level ever. (For a contrary view on savings rates, see "Surviving Rate Hikes Will Be Easier Than You Think.") In the past few years we've saved between 1% and 2% of income. So we're spending 98% to 99% of everything we earn, and we're shocked to find we can't pay for our retirement? That is beyond poor judgment. It's simply delusional.

Those who believe American society went to hell in the Me Decade, the 1970s, will be frustrated to learn that in at least this one respect, it didn't. The savings rate actually climbed through those years, peaking at about 8% in the early 1980s. Its plunge then coincided exactly with the great bull market, which seemed to make sense: By rocketing in value, the market was in effect doing our saving for us. But now much of that value has evaporated. In light of rising life expectancies and living costs, we are by no means well fixed for the future. Yet we still save hardly anything. We just can't believe tomorrow will really come.

It's only a small stretch to see a parallel in the imbroglio over the Super Bowl halftime show, a bizarre embarrassment that would have amounted to little had it not added fire to an issue already building steam. The now-vs.-later angle is that the short-term desire for publicity at any cost completely trumped any thought of the potential effects on children. Such concerns have long been the focus of FCC rules on broadcast content. Did you know, for example, that while obscene material is forbidden, merely "indecent" material is okay between 10 P.M. and 6 A.M.?

Few people realize that because of public anger, the recent much-publicized Senate hearings on indecency in media were scheduled well before the Super Bowl. A week before the game the FCC proposed a record $715,000 fine against Clear Channel for the on-air activities of Bubba the Love Sponge, a personality on some of the company's Florida radio stations. Complaints about indecency to the FCC have shot from 346 in 2001 to 250,000 last year.

A growing number of Americans, especially parents, clearly think the culture is indulging itself in ways that will hurt our future in the form of our kids. But it's hard to foresee significant change anytime soon. The carefully calibrated "can you top this?" approach to media outrageousness works too well. How many times have you uttered the words "Janet Jackson" in the past four weeks? How many times in the 12 months before that? For the nation in aggregate, the first number is far larger than the second, a fact duly noted by everyone seeking fame and attention.

Already we hear demands for new laws that would restrict media indecency and even force people to save more, but those are not primarily matters of law. They're matters of culture--the things people do when no one is telling them what to do. We can't legislate ourselves into a society that will resist eating the marshmallow. We can, however, demand that our leaders and wannabe leaders talk about the issue, whether they really want to or not.

GEOFFREY COLVIN, senior editor at large of FORTUNE, can be reached at gcolvin@fortunemail.com. Watch him on Wall $treet Week With FORTUNE, Friday evenings on PBS.