In my humble opinion, the ancient beliefs about life and after-life as we know them are basically flawed. So are modern beliefs as well.

The ancient beliefs, like those in ancient Egypt, state that (physical) life should not be a big concern as people should expect a much better life after life; the buddhist beliefs go even further than that and claim that living in the physicality is flawed, and the only goal should be to live physicality to attain certain non-physical states; similar beliefs we find in the Christian religion which makes a big distinction between a "soul" and "body". This may lead you to a conclusion that living in the physicality is actually sort of punishment, you just don't know for what reason...

Modern common beliefs (atheist), on the other hand, basically deny existence of anything else than the physical body, implicitly suggesting that you "should" take most of the physicality without any concern in terms of the potential consequences (future events, energetic impact, mental disfunctions, missing the wide picture of the whole society, and more) - other than punishing you by the law or military revenge (thus suggesting avoiding the law and building the military power to control your resources, people included). Committing a crime is good as long as you avoid its concequences; massive crime (like those seen in the 2nd world war) may be this way considered to be an asset if you benefit from it and take advantage of it, and was possibly the biggest result of such paradigms seen in action - people like those don't ask questions like:

"is making experiments on open human brains or trying out different chemical and biological weapons when the victim is still alive and aware of that morally justified?"
because in the context described the answer is always:

"who cares?"
The opposite way of thinking is that presented by some of the ancient and modern masters, encouraging to treat a physical body as a temple, and to listen to your own consciousness instead of external massive paradigms and leaders. Preservance, balance and harmony, then turns out to be a big asset.