The original run of "The Twilight Zone" has an episode called, "A Stop at Willoughby." It follows a business man who is unhappy with life, constantly bullied by at work and at home alike, until while on the train he starts to have visions of a quaint 1880s town called Willoughby, where everyone is treats him kindly. The man tries to tell his wife about it and waxes nostalgia in general about how people these days are so fast-paced, mean, and cold, and how he wishes things could be more like they were back in the past, where people were neighborly, peaceful, and took life slowly, like in Willoughby. The episode culminates with him deciding to stay in Willoughby, happily planning to join some boys on a fishing trip and attend a local fair, but this vision fades away to us seeing the man dead in the snow. According to the conductor, the man had jumped from the train while mumbling something about a "Willoughby" and was killed instantly, with no one understanding what he meant. His body is then loaded up into a van marked, "Willoughby & Son Funeral."
Consider this episode, made all the way back in the time of black and white TV, and then consider how now-a-days, men often say the same things about the time period that the man of the episode was originally from. People waxing nostalgia about how back in the 1950s and early 60s people were so much more neighborly, peaceful, and took life slowly, unlike now... then you look at a story
from the 50s/60s, of an unhappy and suicidal man waxing nostalgia about how people in the 1880s were so much more neighborly, peaceful, and took life slowly, unlike now.
The past was not happier. It was not more peaceful, people were not nicer, things were not better. You only think of it that way because you are afraid of the chaos of the present and the past seems inherently orderly because you already know what to expect from it. Humans also tend to airbrush memories as time goes by, forget all the bad bits and magnify the good bits, as a matter of mental wellbeing. But you have to keep that part of yourself in check, because when you try to bring the past back to life, chances are you're going to wind up bringing back more than just the good bits.
If you have the time, I would recommend listening to
this talk about the supposed "good old days." It's a cold, splash in the face reminder about what was actually going on "back in the good old days," and how we can find happiness not by clinging to tradition, but by seeking improvement and holding onto things because they are good, not because they are old.