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I agree. And again, I think it's telling that the way young people today act if you look at things like zoomer/millennial 'hustle' culture, girlbossing, even lifting culture it's kind of a long-termist thing, it's about setting yourself up for some kind of future. It takes for granted that society is going to exist in much the same way 5, 10, 20 years from now without getting worse, such that personal improvement matters, and I don't think the 70s had that in the same way.
My parents knew people they'd grown up with (in comfortable, PMC families) who just dropped out of life, became hippies, joined communes, drug addicts, peaceniks, greenwich village layabouts/artists, wanderers through India or along the hippie trail, abandoned any putting down of roots because they just thought everyone was going to die. A far cry from the 21st century 'digital nomad' running a drop-shipping business and a 'travel hacking' instagram page from Bali who makes money by credit card referrals. Even many people who did choose the 'normal' path, went to medical school or law school and took well-paying jobs still thought the world was going to end, they just felt the weight of responsibility or didn't want to be poor until it happened.
I like the point that you're making, but I think that this is only a partial explanation. There are a lot of people who are now preaching self-reliance/getting the bag/lifting not because they believe society is still going to exist in the same way in the future, but because of the opposite. They think that a lot of the existing support structures are going to go away, and in that context you absolutely want to be independently sustainable and as physically formidable as possible. The idea that society is going through the ragged steps of decline and fall that mark the end of every empire is an incredibly compelling argument for self-improvement.
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