NEETs might provide a strong example that this is the default of human leisure. In my experience most NEETs lament their lack of motivation. It's possible that their depression is a result of adverse societal pressure, but I posit that most humans lack the ability to structure their time without an external motivator.

It's often said that pain is the best teacher, but it is also common to refer to "the carrot or the stick". Pleasure provides motivation just as great as pain. Lately on Hacker News people have discussed addiction to smart-phones, referring to the dopamine hit resulting from notifications. We also see this with television series, where people will spend hours of free time binge-watching a show. It may well be that we can no longer control ourselves.

A recent science-fiction piece[1] references this phenomena: "I read pdfs of outlandish philosophers, but I do it while frantically checking for notifications" and "Normally I just fulfill my smart contracts and go back to reading Deleuze and Guattari, by which I mean I play first person shooters while the pdf is up on my other monitor".

Hikikomori provide another interesting example, perhaps without the social pressure; although I admit that I'm not very knowledgeable about Japanese society. It's been too long since I've read them; but the books "Hikikomori: Adolescence Without End" and "Welcome to the NHK" may provide some insight.

While I would like to think that humans are intrinsically motivated to _do_, experience shows me that most people are content to merely consume. Technology engineered to keep us scrolling only seems to exasperate the issue.

[1] https://zerohplovecraft.wordpress.com/2018/05/11/the-gig-eco...

> While I would like to think that humans are intrinsically motivated to _do_, experience shows me that most people are content to merely consume. Technology engineered to keep us scrolling only seems to exasperate the issue.

Reminds me of the concept of interpassivity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpassivity. We maybe be intrinsically motivated to _do_, but we have developed technology that can satiate this desire, e.g. watching someone else play video games on twitch.tv.

I hadn't heard of interpassivity before. It's an interesting concept and I think that it fits my own experience. Interpassivity is truthy.

But how come that's what most of jobless people do, too?

First off, that sounds like baseless speculation. Second, there might be a causal relation between lacking motivation/interests and being jobless. It's not a representative sample of the population at large.

Jobless people are often stressed.

Jobless people aren't often just jobless. They're stay-at-home moms. They're people on disability. They're people with medical or mental conditions. They're people stuck in welfare trap - they get just enough money to make it not profitable to work (they'd lose it if they went to work, but no entry-level job will pay them more than the amount they get from welfare), but not enough to support any creative hobby. Or they have jobs - on the grey/black market, so that they can get both benefits and some shit untaxed pay.

Absolutely, and there is also a perceived risk by many people that if they become to active or vested in a non-work activity that it will negatively impact their source of income.