I think your point of view is mostly driven by nostalgia.

I agree there are some things about today's society that are terrible, but a lot of those problems, we bring down on ourselves.

It's hard to tell when nostalgia is real or not, and basically any comparison to the past can be dismissed as nostalgia, or it could be true but one thing strikes me as clear cut is that there was a lot less stress around. Personally I'd swap out abundance over stress at any time.

I don't think that's true. My parents are far happier than I am. They have a far more optimistic view of the world than I do because they've had it far better.

What makes them happy that is unavailable to you?

They own their own house. They could easily afford to have children. They could easily find well paid work outside of big cities, set up their own business. They didn't need higher education to get a well paid job. They didn't need to work nights and weekends for 15 years straight on side projects just to get by (like I did). They have more friends and their friendships are stronger too because they don't have to keep moving countries/cities to find jobs that pay enough (and with the right tax regime) to support a basic lifestyle. They didn't have to change jobs all the time to keep up with inflation. Their jobs were meaningful and useful to society (not some financial schemes). They're part of their community. They are less stressed. They feel free to express their views with their friends and colleagues. They felt that they could trust the government for most of their lives. Taxes were lower since inflation has since pushed everyone into higher tax brackets and the taxes actually went to useful projects, not into the pockets of big corporate executives and financiers.

Nowadays, every worker is subsidizing corporations; subsidizing their own slavery within the corporate system - Sometimes unwittingly, sometimes against their will because in many countries, retirement contributions are compulsory and deducted from incomes; this money is 'invested' into corporate stocks and straight into the pockets of big executives who get huge bonuses thanks to the rising stock prices; driven by all the big pension funds propping up stock prices using workers' money which was taken out of their salaries without their explicit consent.

I’ll take renting an apartment instead of owning over dying (or just fighting) in war.

Lack of stress perhaps? More harmony and less of uncertainty and hopelessness?

These are subjective and personal. What causes the stress? What caused reduction in harmony, certainty, hope?

Your parents probably lives through a transition from extreme scarcity to abundance. As scarce as things were for them in the 80s, they were probably at lot more scarce in the 50s and 40s. Maybe your parents didn’t experience that directly but their parents did for sure.

From our grandparents generation and before, a much higher proportion of them were directly affected by things like war.

If you’re lacking hope because you’re afraid of something like war, I would consider that a luxury compared to actually being in a war.

If the prospect of impending austerity or violence leads to more suffering than the experience of these things themself then I would not say that being at war or hungry is the worse situation. While maybe subjective and personal by some criteria, still real and measurable.

Peoples life satisfaction is U shaped, it tends to dip in middle age then increase later in life.