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Hmm... I actually can explain why certain things were better in the past compared to today. It comes down to market research, consumerism/saturation of capitalism.
Take modern music, for example. The 60s and 70s was a time where the music industry hadn't flattened out in any way. The labels and publishers were trying to work out what people responded to. And people were responding to all kinds of stuff. It was just a mishmash of tastes and people liked what stoked their imagination.
And with regards to the artists and musicians, they were mainly just making whatever the hell sounded good and felt good. No one quite had any idea what they were doing.
Almost everything was really original for the above reasons.
You had bands who released albums, containing what you could vaguely call rock but with many other influences, containing three tracks, one of which was 20 mins long and the other two being 10 mins each. And such a band would go on tour selling out stadiums and selling millions of copies of said album.
Of course, there was bad music then. But the sheer proportion of amazing music was insane.
And it was because we hadn't yet been market researched into oblivion. It was like the wild west; anything goes.
I'll give another example... car design. Market research has managed to narrow car design down to a very generic form that is not the most beautiful but the least offensive and somewhat pleasant to the most amount of people, to guarantee sales.
Back before such deep market research, designers were artists who would take a risk and design something in their vision. Not everyone would like it. Perhaps the design would be divisive. Ok, some bad ugly cars would come out but there would be some incredible designs. Now, almost every car looks like a generic blob.
IIRC a lot of the generic blob design is driven by aerodynamics
And optimizing for maximum interior space and comfort for aerodynamics
Of course there are practical elements to design. That hasn't changed. We didn't suddenly discover aerodynamics when cars became blobs toward the 2nd half of the 90s. It's been a factor in car design for a very long time, so this does not negate my point at all.
My original point was to negate the notion that the claim of things being better in the past was unfounded.
Of course, there are examples of mediums and things being better more recently, such as animated TV series. The quality of today's far outshines that of 30 years ago, for example.
But some of the most culturally important areas were better previously. Music and film clearly are important elements of culture.