Oh the fulfilling bit, hard to argue one way or the other. Might be a grass is greener sort of scenario. Like, as a dev who works from home, spending a few days doing hard, long hours of manual labour on my buddy's cabin was fun but holy damn, not sure I could dig that every day for years. Especially without physiotherapy and modern medicine (I play soccer a few times a week and without physio, I'd be a broken husk of a man.)

I imagine the protagonist might have looked at us sitting in the warm with all the free time, multimedia beyond his comprehension, literally every book written at our fingertips and he would've been fair to wonder something like "in such luxury, how could anyone not find their own meaning? With the freedom to learn almost anything imaginable,, with food and a warm bed being all but guaranteed, what person could blame the world instead of themselves for not finding purpose or passion?"