Benevolence and sacrifice do seem to be uncharacteristic of our biology. The only evidence I have to back that up is like 1500 hours of experience meditation.

“Life is suffering” is the basis of Buddhism. That means existence is fucked in all kinds of ways and the way out of the hamster wheel is suffering is accepting the four noble truths and following the eightfold path.

I’d put some money that. I’m not a Buddhist, but I do meditate, and yeah, a lot of the bullshit we suffer for is due to ignorance (or the four noble truths, basically). Just ignorance. Meditating banishes ignorance and from there stuff from the eightfold path naturally follows. Benevolence being one of those things, but it doesn’t come without a lot of sacrifice. Meditation is like self sacrifice.