Most of these people were believing in judeo christian values, god and christ. Religion was still deeply embeded, everything had a meaning, was simple, it was the will of god and if someone failed and you succeeded it meant you were the chosen one. Nowadays these myths have been debunked and people are less stable mentally, more prone to stress, and there are many many more divorces and dysfunctional families which generate troubled behaviors and personalities. Food is of shittier quality , which destroys the body faster, but people are also less spiritual, which destroy the brain, the thought process, faster too. Spirituality as fake as it is, acted as a protection against the randomness absurdity of life. It gave an artificial, reassuring meaning to it. It helped people thinking alike to stick together, believing in a shared delusion.
Nowadays people survive physically, but dont believe in fairy tales anymore and are hurt psychologically by the brutality, cynicism of life sooner. We are also flooded more than ever by conflictual informations coming from everywhere which participate greatly in accelerating our understanding of the inner random absurdity of life. To put it bluntly, it took more time in the past to realize the true nature of our animal condition, than it does noawadays. People are aging, growing up, getting old, faster.
