"Life was tough but we forget how tough it was because most of us idealize the simpler times of the past."

I would say that life was tougher for the poor indeed.

But if you take a rich peasant/small noble - they did not lived that miserable.

And the things we idealize about them - less complicated live (they did not had to worry about china, nor russia, nor korea, nor NSA, etc. only to dangers close to them, big nobleman, enemy neighbours), allmost no pollution/noise. Living close to nature, going hunting, working with your body in the field - are still valid, I think. If you had a self-sustainable village in times of peace, people had not to worry too much about other things, than the things they could see.

Or a native american hunter tribe. If they were strong - then they had a pretty good, altough simple live. Even though they were hungry in spring and occasionally fought wars.

So the idealisation is not per se wrong, people just don't know, that the image they have in their mind, is not valid for the average person.

So even if there would be a going back, I do not think it makes sense - but while going forward, we can still try to strive for the things we idealize about the past, like simplicity. And by that I do not mean giving up on technology or globalisation, just avoiding unnecessary complications. So ... more decoupling, modularisation, on the technological as well as on the political level, just KISS ... even though that it is not simple, I know, but it is still something worth going for. And not more global regulations, "free trade" agreements you have to study for years to understand and still missing out the secret parts, competing locked down systems going together with companys making their products harder to repair on purpose, and so on and on and on.

So I am dreaming of the day, when I can just print out the small broken part of my vacuum cleaner(or car, ... or computer) with the official specs, instead of having to by a new one, because this model gets no longer produced.