Far more advanced than tolerating misery in the hope that it'll all get better in an afterlife.
I understand eternity or afterlife, if you like, as something you share with other people, people of the past, present or of the future, something which does not die in you when you die. If you do not think of a religion as good for you, then think of a new science, new knowledge, which would return a man to his/her spiritual home and out of the world in which (s)he is reduced to a superfluous number in a mechanistical universe - today's world of 'eat, drink & be merry for tomorrow we die'.
This is trully a terrible world, most aptly described by Aldus Huxley in his famous book
The Brave New World.
The Ultimate Revolution:
"There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution."
pulsemedia.org/2009/02/02/aldous-huxley-the-ultimate-revolution
Aldous Huxley