The "best" era to have grown up?

As I approach my 5th decade, I've reflected on this a bit in my life and again the other day I was feeling very blessed to have grown up and lived in maybe the best era in America. I was born in the 1970s.

I enjoyed a really safe small town life, and never had any real risk of being drafted or fighting in a blood bath war like WWII, Korea, or Vietnam. There was a background concern of nuclear war but it never really seemed to impact anyone I knew, and the Cold War ended when I was a teen.

People were seemingly normal and friendly, and not insane like today. The self absorbed narcissism of today wasn't really possible back then or certainly not as broadcast. I feel bad for kids growing up in this lunatic world of modern times...

In the 1980s and 1990s, I enjoyed the best music, great cars from prior eras were around, and as an adult now great older cars are very affordable. I lived during what I think was the height of college and pro sports for enjoyment. Entertainment in movies, music, and sports really were at their zenith. Vehicles pretty much peaked in the 1990s and early 2000s as I was becoming a driver and owner. They had enough safety and technology to be helpful, efficent, and reliable, but not overly complicated to the point nobody knows how to fix them.

We have excellent and affordable guns and excellent carry and defense laws. It seems that the best guns were designed from around the 1950s thru the 1990s, and those guns were all widely available, and have at times been extremely affordable.

The technology revolution was fantastic, and technology was overwhelmingly helpful and useful, versus now where technology seems at times more harmful than helpful. The dot.com revolution and the transition onto computers was a fascinating time to experience. The internet and email revolution, the shift from analogue media, music tapes to CDs, CDs to digital files, shifting from tube to LED and Plasma TVs, etc. It was such a fun and exciting time to live.

Medical science has evolved significantly in my lifetime, allowing me to overcome and survive several incidents that would have probably killed me.

We've had mostly peace and prosperity in my life. We had a brief Gulf War with a swift victory that allowed America to flex our muscles. We did have tragedies, including 9/11/01, and the wars that followed. I was proud to be able to join and serve in the GWOT. But the American death toll from all of these spread out over nearly 2 decades has been very small compared to traditional wars.

My whole life, until recently, enjoyed a very patriotic America and people seemed very united.

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I've thought about living in a different 5-decade period. Living in colonial times or settlers times would have been brutal and without much joy or understanding of the world I think... and without medical science I probably would have been a cripple or died very young.

And I would really not like to be a youth today. It seems like a horrible, narcissistic, joyless world for kids to grow up in. The nation is so divided, much of it doesn't seem patriotic, and there's so much toxic poison and mind rot out there for kids, and they don't have the same exciting times or entertainment value we had in my youth...

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What are your thoughts?

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The "best" era to have grown up?