We are living in a veritable Golden Age on Earth.

The threat of war, for most, has receded into a bad dream in human annals. One metric of a good society is how rich and varied its entertainment options are. There are more books and movies being produced of quality than ever before. The entertainers are doing their best, and doing so successfully.

I was looking at Jeff Abbott thriller novels in the library today and flipping through the books. They are well-constructed, painstakingly well written works. These 4 or 5 books on the shelf were available for the free acquisition of a library card.

If you have a little money, you can go see a movie. Borderlands is coming out very shortly and it should be a good one. It looks to be a post-apocalyptic future adventure story. Sure, it has female characters, but that is just one of the drawbacks of modern life. In most other respects, the movie, with Jack Black as the robot Claptrap, looks like fun.

Sex is easy to acquire and painless to maintain. You don’t have to get married in today’s world to acquire it. Women are putting out at great rates that even a beta male nothing-entity can take advantage of. If you have the money, you can go risk free with online prostitutes, who will fulfill your every fantasy for a reasonable price.

Jobs are easy to get. The minimum wage is higher than it’s ever been. It’s easy to feel useful and at least semi-fulfilled, knowing you’re doing something that a power broker is willing to shell out hard currency to maintain. Then, when you get off work, you can meet with your friends — people are open to connecting with other people in today’s society and have no fear of trickery or ambush. It’s an ideal world in that respect too.

The Golden Age has been here since the 1950s, when government social safety nets combined with vast changes in the technosphere infrastructure allowed just about everybody to prosper. Personal problems like autism and depression, and social ills like opioid addiction, are nothing new. Even the Golden Age has its warts. But these are minor in contrast with the backdrop.

The glittering, golden backdrop is a testimony to a thousand years of social and economic development, only accelerated during the age of the Industrial Revolution. It is worldwide. People are content. Only the misfits dream of something better.

Who are the misfits? They are men who have been raised in such a way that they don’t jibe with the preferences and rules of mainstream society. Usually they’ve raised themselves in some fundamental manner. For them, the Golden Age is a sham, a hoax, a cruel joke. Everything they value is held in starvation reserve, never coming to the fore, like a plant that is not watered though it is set on the window ledge in full view of the sun.

For the misfits, life is insufferable, a load of bullshit.

As an example, take the Communist Misfit. He realizes he will never again be given a shot at bringing home the People’s Paradise of his dreams. The failures of Communism in Russia and Red China drove all thought of Communism from people’s minds. But not his. He still wants a shot at the brass ring, a chance to make the economics work this time — through computers, through A.I., whatever.

Or take the Arts Misfit. He would rather spend public money a la the Medici banking family on art and cultural treasures. But he sees it going toward contemptible social programs instead. For the Arts Misfit, the lack of beauty in the world is more than a crying shame — it is a stab in the heart every time he looks around at the gray nothingness of our cities.

The misfits will never unite because they can never agree on a single agenda. The Communist Misfit has nothing in common with the Arts Misfit, and the whole host of other Misfits out there, clamoring and muttering in their varied corners, refuse to cross-pollinate, much less associate personally.

The Death of the Golden Age will only happen once a superior form of Golden Age supersedes it. At this point, the Golden Age schemata is self-perpetuating. The material riches of the world are becoming more and more sustainable.

If a new Golden Age arises, it will not be based upon the material but upon the emotional — satisfying wants we never even knew we had. If a new Golden Age arises, it will mean the death of liberty, for liberty is a weak man’s political system designed to protect the 99% sheep from the 1% wolves. But the wolves are eternally hungry, and they are circling the flocks. A tyrant-wolf is the only drop of catalyst necessary to change this social fluid a darker green, to raise havoc in this placid flock of winged-inaction birds, to slash ribbons in the tapestry of life. A tyrant-wolf is the answer to all the Misfits’ dreams.