Comment by muzani

Credit to a severely depressed friend for this one. After doing the cycle of therapist, pills, self-help books, etc, what helped the most was housework. It didn't solve the problems, but it kept her going day after day.

There's actual research on happiness a while back, and it ended with the concept of flow. Csikszentmihalyi found that people were unhappiest when watching TV and happiest when doing something of moderate challenge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

But why is TV the natural response to stress?

I think people in an exploitative culture have trouble with work. There's the mindset that the rich are where they deserve to be because they exploit, while the scrubs that work hard are where they deserve to be because they're exploitable. So there's an aversion to productivity, and people think the escape is apathy.

But there's also some human nature to be productive and contribute; unproductive genes would likely go extinct. And there's also a desire to be challenged. A desire to move things from a state of chaos to order.