Religion is the opiate of the masses. - Karl Marx
In my experience spirituality tends to promote growth, self-awareness, responsibility...religiosity tends to promote dependence, and victimhood.
If you don't want to be responsible for how your life turns out, then religion is the answer because it tells you: 1) whatever bad is happening is not your fault and 2) someone (GOD) is coming to rescue you.
Spiritual people I know who are also religious tend to not hold extreme views of good/evil, right/wrong or to shift the blame to someone else when things don't turn out. They also don't expect that they can just sit on their hands and wait for someone else to rescue them. Instead, they promote the idea that we are all responsible for ourselves, and the community. They look for and see the good in people, and support them to be their better selves. In fact, many of them seem to hold the view that God expects you to live up to your potential.
Especially among JWs, the viewpoint that "this world is so horrible" seems to comfort them because they think the worse it gets, or the worse they perceive it to be - the closer everyone is to having things get better because God is going to wipe it all out and start over. This outlook, I think, accounts for the reason why JWs put everything on hold - I won't __________ until the New System. In the New System, I'll learn to (cook, play music, dance, etc) Understandably then, the majority of their expenditure of time, energy and focus is on "surviving" to the end.
The reason why people are't happy is that their needs aren't being met. I'm a firm believer in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. 
JWs tend to be uneducated and low skilled workers, so they are in fact working harder than people with education and skills because what they can do is less valuable to the marketplace. In this way, their perception becomes their reality. On top of that, they are trained to ignore or devalue any good that may exist in the world - what is accomplished by non-profits, individuals or evidence of basic human good. They focus on and see the bad, ignore the good.JWs are not allowed to pursue (at least not openly) the natural process of self-actualization.
As I was doing some research related to Maslow, I remembered the account of the Sermon on the Mount. The first thing Jesus did with that crowd was feed them. I've always wondered why he would do that. Then I saw Maslow's chart. Of course, if people's physical needs aren't met -hungry, thirsty, need to pee - they can't sustain attention to meeting more sophisticated needs like spirituality. I don't even know if this story is true, but I think it is very insightful into human nature. If it is true, and it was put there as an instruction - it is even more telling that JWs do not follow this example in any real way - they do not have homeless shelters, food banks, etc. They blantantly ignore the example of the man they proclaim to follow.
It would be nice to see JWs be able to get to a place where they can both acknowledge and promote the good that humans do accomplish while at the same time promoting spirituality based on self-respect, growth and community engagement. It doesn't seem reasonable to me to have the perspective that because the system is broken and we are expecting something better, we can't work to accomplish the good we can while we wait for something better.
It also doesn't seem reasonable to me that a person has to prove their Christianity by having a hard life. In fact, many Christians believe that living a good life - doing good for others, demonstrating Christian qualities in their everyday lives is the way to draw people to the way of life. Not condemning them for the wrong they do but speaking to the potential they hold. I'm afraid that day will never come.
The either/or thinking is childish,limiting and at the crux of everything that is wrong with how JWs operate.