Nature had been doing that for billions of years until a few decades ago when we were told "progress" meant we had to stop doing the same thing more peacefully and intentionally.

My guess is the future belongs to those who don't stop—who, in fact, embrace the opposite of stopping.

I would even suggest that the present belongs to those who didn't stop. It may be too late for normal people to ever catch up by the time we realize the trick that was played on us.

The present absolutely belongs to those who didn't stop, but it's been a lot longer than a few decades.

Varying degrees of greedy / restless / hungry / thirsty / lustful are what we've got, because how is contentedness ever going to compete with that over millennia?

It just occurred to me that this is one of the core things most successful religions have been trying to do in some form from the time they first arose.

I've had a lot of negative things to say about religion for many years. However, as has been often observed, 'perception is reality' to a certain extent when it affects how people behave, and perhaps it's kind of a counterweight against our more selfish tendencies. I just wish we could do something like it without made up stories and bigotry. Secular humanist Unitarians might be about the best we can do right now in my opinion... I'm hoping that group continues to grow (they have been in recent years).