I read what you posted a couple of times because I understood it but I also disagreed. Until now, I couldn't give an adequate response.
I think your answer... "It’s difficult to think of a real life situation you could compare it to. But whatever you could come up with. If you put people in that situation 24 hours a day, every day, for their whole life. They would somehow make the best of it, no matter how fucked up and dangerous it was"... is misplaced or misguided. There are current examples of war torn situations where young adults (the main character in 'TLoU' is 19 now, remember) live life on the edge and are not aloof when they don't know what's around the corner.
But I think what's really changed my view on something I might have begrudgingly accepted as 'decent' writing, is the stark difference in using war torn/ siege tension in a story, in 'Andor' with ep 8 at its peak.
In the previous series of 'TLoU' the writers used 'Joel' to balance out the naivety of 'Ellie', but despite 'Ellie' getting older and vastly experienced in seeing and doing the killing, she remains childish, not headstrong, childish.
It's irksome to me and is just badly written within the type of world-building it's aiming for.
So, let's put a pin in the conversation here as I don't want to reveal any plot points or we can put the rest within the spoiler tag if you wish to discuss things further.
Thanks.