Humans seem to be the only species that is "uneasy" with it's situation. Every species encounters hardships, but only humans seem to be actively anxious and upset about their hardships, to wish that their situation were different, and to seek out patterns which would explain why our situation is this way rather than some other way. This, in turn, is arguably one of the key elements underlying religions.
In A Brief History of Death, Douglas J. Davies writes:
Human beings, unlike all other creatures as far as we are aware, find fault not just with themselves but also with their world. At one level this is perfectly understandable, for many things in life are awkward and thwart obvious plans, but at another we are led to see a species often ill at ease with its natural environment. It wants things to be other than they are.
Many myths explain this in terms of how drought or hunger first appeared or, indeed, how death appeared. Homo sapiens, the uneasy species, appears to be exploratory by nature. Its expansion from its earliest members, probably in Africa, has populated the globe with its many diverse environments and, to those concrete domains of forest, plains and ice and sand deserts it has added new environments of the mind - heavens, hells, paradises and staging posts to rebirth on earth.
For religious believers these transcendent worlds are believed to exist and to have been revealed by the deities to their human followers. While for non-believers those worlds are the outcome of imagination, they remain of considerable significance as commentaries on belief and as maps of human experience, emotion and relationships. But, although death may have prompted such beliefs in 'traditional futures', it is not something that can simply be described, classified, and theorized into insignificance.
So why are things the way they are instead of some other way -- some way that involves less death, suffering, etc.? Most religions seem to place the blame on us personally. Both eastern and western religions tend to teach that we are in some way responsible for the problems we encounter, whether it's because we are sinful, ignorant, have too much desire, or whatever. It's thus also our responsibility to find some way out of these problems and achieve a better existence.
There is something to be said for making people responsible for their condition rather than letting them think that they are helpless, but the fact of the matter is we are often helpless in the face of circumstances. We often can't change or affect what happens to us; what we can change, though, is how to react to our circumstances. That's where a large amount of our personal responsibility has to lie.
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