Originally Posted by
Dannon Oneironaut
The elimination of suffering can only happen one individual at a time. This is the motivation for evolution. We should only breed with happy people. If, at some time, the level of true happiness and joy exceeds the weight of suffering perhaps humanity as a whole will have enough awareness to be happy.
Buddhism is all about the elimination of suffering. An average guy decided he would die or find the way to end suffering and thus became the Buddha. He was not the only son of God. he didn't do miracles. He wasn't an occultist or even a theist. He didn't teach to obey an angry God. He didn't teach to go to heaven. He was a guy who wanted to end suffering here on Earth, in each individual, forever. Unfortunately we can only be responsible for our own happiness or suffering, we cannot end it for other people. The best the Buddha could do was to teach the way that he found.
But basically he has a simple system. It begins with the 4 noble truths:
1. Suffering and existence go hand in hand.
2. It is craving and aversion that cause suffering.
3. There is a way to end your own suffering by not relying on your craving, attachments, expectations, and aversion.
4. The way to achieve this is called "The eightfold path".
And then you have the 8-fold path which basically means to follow your conscience and to meditate rightly.
Having freeing yourself from suffering you have a choice of not existing anymore, or staying around to help others get free of suffering.
Looking towards history to see where we can possibly evolve to is dangerous. First of all, the whole of history is so short. We just barely emerged from the trees. Our civilizations are just primitive experiments similar to playing Jenga. Yes, our history is made up of wars. But just because we are animals doesn't mean we are incapable of being mindful and cultivating our awareness so we can make decisions with consciousness instead of cannibalistic reactionary reactions. Yes, evolution is still happening, and we have the ability to evolve consciously for the first time in the history of the Earth.
Just to say that humans caused so much suffering throughout history doesn't mean that we can't change. In fact, if we don't change we will become obsolete.