You clearly have never been a farmer. People left the farms because the alternatives were BETTER. Not because of "optimism" but because working 12 hours a day

You clearly have never been a farmer. People left the farms because the alternatives were BETTER. Not because of "optimism" but because working 12 hours a day for a guaranteed wage you could use to buy food / clothing / shelter was better than working 16 hours a day to try and grow food only to still potentially starve due to environmental factors outside your control. Modernity certainly has its problems, but for the vast, vast majority of people its much preferable to the drudgery, toil and uncertainty of being a subsistence farmer.