As always, it is a question of degree. A young adult in the 70s had plenty of time to reflect and live outside. The technology of the preceding 50 years has not made this more accessible. If anything, the slot-machine nature of our computing reduces the likelihood of it.
> A young adult in the 70s had plenty of time to reflect and live outside.
A young adult "in an already developed country with relatively new infrastructure that had already been built for them and they chose not to continue to invest in and improve" in the 70s had plenty of time to reflect and live outside.
Meanwhile, because of those young adults lack of productivity in the 70s, people even in the US are drinking water with lead, have their homes destroyed by climate change, had the forests die and passively watched as desertification took hold.
That said, I don't blame those young adults individually, they were a product of poor societal leadership. While not in aggregate (as evident in today's "crumbling" US and European infrastructure and diminished infrastructural head-start), I'm also sure many of these individuals found a healthy balance between being outdoors relaxing and improving the human condition for the long run.
All I'm calling out is that in aggregate they were no bastions you should hold in any high regard, and definitely not something to try and replicate.
What we need is better technology to lift up the human condition, allow each of us to continue to help improve the human condition with roughly 40 hours per year of effort, and spend the rest outdoors/gaming/enjoying/relaxing in general.
