(1) people dont know how to think and have limited vocabulary compared to the 80s and 90s
(2) growing up in the 90s WW2 was on TV all of the time but now in the netflix age is buried deep somewhere inside netflix / hulu
To battle this in yourself watch tv / listen to stuff from the past, stuff from the 50s to 90s.
personally looking back at when i was a teenager, I was much more creative and free thinking. Through all of my university years I always felt like we were not supposed to think, and there was no time to think since you had to learn all the stuff taught to write good grades.. I noticed this especially when writing my master thesis that I had forgotten to think for myself on what anything I was taught means and whether it is correct...
The people you describe are the ones who gave us the society we have today. People like the wright brothers, who built motorcycle engines from scratch with limited tools, are the ones who invented the tech we now rely on.