The eightfold path

The eightfold path when I began to read it first reminded me of the stages of grieving in how most people list them in a specific order but they do not necessarily occur in that in order. In fact they usually occur out of order and sometimes even when you've moved on from one stage to another you'll go back again to a previous one. In other words it's like the eightfold path in that they are not "a sequence of single steps, instead they are highly interdependent principles that have to be seen in relationship with each other."
This also caught my intention and my mind began to wonder the more I read. These pieces of the eightfold path are very similiar to other religions. Such as the ten conmandments of some religious aspects. In addition even if one is not religious they tend to have similiar morals in a way that people should be kind etc. Like the saying treat others the way you wish to be treated.
The eightfold path also tied into my economics course in the fact that how people can have perfectly happy lives with out corruption or lots of meterial things as long as they have the basic nessities of life. So my economice teacher would ask us if thats the case then why do economists not take that into consideration why do we always want the economy and etc to keep growing when we don't need it to? Why do we use more of our natural resources than what is truly needed? Why can't we learn from these people how to be happy with just the basics since it is very possible to do so and it would help save our planet?
The more I thought about how we could all be alike in that we could all just live off of needs instead of wants, that we could just go back to the basics made me think if it was possible to do that in an economic stand point then why can't people do that in a religios aspect. Since most of have the same underlying guidelines why can't they all just be civil to one another? I understand that the more you look into religions you'll see they have differences but thats life everyone has differences but despite how much some of us would hate to admit we are all the same as well. Wether we evolved some animal or a higher being made us we all still stand on a common ground with our DNA. It's like the underlying rules in religions. So I say no religion is necessarily better than another as long as you stick to what you believe in and grasp the main points/ideas from it like those mentioned in the eightfold path and other similiar ones from other religions.