The enigma of 70's

It always has remained an enigma why am I so fascinated by that era. Be it the music (Pink Floyd, RD Burman and John Denver), the political movements (Vietnam War and its after effects, Green movement or Naxalite movement in Bengal), or be the freedom of expression (from extreme like Larry Flynt to Noam Chomsky) to other sociological and cultural changes like feminism. So how come so many of these important sociological changes happened during this time.

What caused all this upheaval. Though for sure many of the events were caused by earlier movements. Especially the coming of equanimity of mordern life after the heady days of 50's and mainly 60's, when mordern technology was thought to to be a panecea. But still it does not answer why these movement of such high degree of global, holistic and evangelistic mindset and thinking was replaced by more practical mindset of 80's and 90's. It becomes even more interesting when you look and meet the people of that era. They are now usually responsible aprt of community and are not any different from practical and rational Gen Xers like us.

I had read in one Sociology book, one of the reason for this was that the society goes through periods of cultural change. The 50's and 60's were marked by the practical reasoning. The world had to build after the upheaval of WWII. But their children who inherited a better world and maybe one of the most optimistic times ever achieved, became more holistic. This might have lead to the broad minded and cosmopolitan people of that era. But unfortunately good items did not last long. The 80's and 90's with world brought the practical realities with the oil crash and other political events. Changing a lot of people to become more self oriented.

But are these reason true reasons. I seriously think there is more to this, events and history have more to them than just few macroscopic tools of analysis. But what were these aspects, that changed the same people and also the one that came after that.