Remembering The Eden Self: The Urgency of Post-Capitalist Identity Formation
There is a memory, deep in the body, of a time before we had to prove our worth and the right to exist as humans on earth. When there was a commons we all shared. Before we were citizens of nation-states, categorized by census data, slotted into genders and races and roles. Before we were entrepreneurs or citizens or personal brands. Before we were gendered, racialized, categorized, measured by output, productivity, performance. Before the algorithms. Before we were anything that could be optimized.
This is the Eden Self. It is Imago Dei—the image of the divine within every being, an inner radiance. It is the Atman, the flame of consciousness, the ground of self beneath all identities. It is the essential beingness, the living awareness of a direct and intimate experience of belonging as the world: connected, restful, moving in relational attunment. It may sound like poetics, but it’s the deepest truth.
Many of us have been drawn into an implicit cosmology where we define ourselves by what we have, what we do, and what we produce. Yes that worldview is capitalism, and it didn’t just build the economy—it built us. Or rather, it built a version of us. The identities shaped under capitalism are rooted in performance, and ownership—deeply embedded myths that teach us to equate our worth with output, speed, visibility, and accumulation.
But what happens when a wildfire, an earthquake, or an unexpected technological shift wipes that slate clean? When artificial intelligence renders creative expertise seemingly obsolete? These moments of collapse reveal the fragility of identities built around control and productivity.¹
When crisis strips away the structures we’ve relied on—job titles, possessions, social standing—it can leave behind an existential. psychic void. If I am no longer what I do, or what I have, then who am I? To know oneself as essential and belonging—without any external markers—is key to thriving after this kind of loss.
Because capitalism is engineered for growth, speed, and certainty—traits that turn brittle in the face of systemic unraveling. Capitalist identities don’t know how to die well. They don’t know how to grieve, to rest, or to release control. To not be in the growth mandate. The movement to allow things to fall away is a healing movement.
If we believe that safety lies in control: over time, over money, over space and self-image- and we have been rewarded for being tightly wound around control— routines, goals and self-optimization— then we will be deeply disoriented when those structures dissolve. The movement to reengineering the self concept - so that you are the same person with the same value to life when you’re on top of the world and when you’re under water- is a profound one.
The capitalist self imagines itself as a standalone unit, which breeds loneliness and a quiet terror that we must face everything by ourselves. But those who have a communal frameworks recover more swiftly from crisis, because mutual aid is already part of their way of being. Where the capitalist self feels shame in receiving help, the relational self finds grace in giving and receiving.
Because capitalism privileges extraction over relationship, many of us were never taught how to root identity in connection. Cultures grounded in interdependence and mutual care are often better equipped to metabolize loss—because identity is shared, not siloed.
Knowing that resilience is relational, that we are a kinship, not a kingship, is a healing movement.
To navigate catastrophe with grace, we need to know, in our cellular fibers, who we are without our stuff, our consumption, our productivity, our usefulness. Who we are without the frame of capitalism telling us what makes us worthy. And this remembrance—that we are essential, that we belong—may be the deepest resilience of all. To know yourself as a sovereign, sacred expression of consciousness, to know yourself outside of capitalist identity is a soul survival strategy. It grounds us in values that do not crash with the markets: care, presence, reciprocity and reverence.
As we imagine and work toward a future society we want to live into—where we don’t repeat the fractal of domination—then we need to start within, with the question of identity.
The Great Remembering
The first step may be to really slow down and notice where capitalist logic lives in the body and psyche. It may show up in the drive to optimize, to monetize every gift, to turn even rest into productivity. It can manifest as guilt for stillness, fear of irrelevance, or an internalized pressure to constantly improve.
Post-capitalist identity begins to take shape when those habits are held with awareness, not judged but witnessed, and gently questioned. From there, we can begin to compost the old myths. To be liberated here, try on these questions: What happens to the self when we stop performing capitalism? What happens to the heart when it’s no longer managed by metrics? What happens to us—individually, relationally—when the extraction ends?
One wave is about shedding things such as:
The habit of monetizing everything I love
The impulse to share every insight online as proof of usefulness
The guilt when I rest
The reflex to keep producing in order to be lovable
So we begin to build these habits, and we find that it still gets us, because we often carry it in our bodies. We might bring the same urge for mastery to spiritual development as we did to education and promotion. We try to earn belonging in post-capitalist spaces using capitalist strategies. We hustle for healing. We optimize our vulnerability. We become efficient spiritual seekers. So, it’s a subtle thing to notice.
Here are some questions to help notice the hooks. They’re composting questions. They decompose the performance.
Am I doing this to be seen as good?
What am I afraid will happen if I stop producing?
Do I know how to be loved when I’m quiet?
Is there space in my life where I don’t have to be useful?
Do I feel safe when I’m not helping anyone?
Who am I in rooms where no one knows my work?
Am I okay being ordinary?
Eventually, we create for the joy of co-creation, instead of metrics. We offer in the spirit of circulation. We rest to remember and to feel more.
The other thing that’s critical, is to get in the field and serve and relate. The post-capitalist self is shaped through relational practices: mutual aid instead of competition, generosity without strings, reverence for the slow and the small. It is grounded in the body, in the land, in cycles of care. This identity isn’t just a psychological shift; it’s an ecological and spiritual one. You need to see the new way of being emergent, and feel all the unexpected joys and rewards, as the old one dies.
Experiments to See Where This Lives in You
(I have done all of these things! EYE OPENING!)
Spend a full day not explaining or justifying anything you do.
Notice what happens in your body when someone else is resting.
Give something beautiful with no announcement and no expectation.
Let yourself be seen in moments when you’re not polished, helpful, or ready.
Track when the urge to produce arises—breathe with it before responding.
Try not being useful in a group, and notice what that activates.
Find spaces where you’re not the teacher, the healer, or the host.
So, here’s to a radical reorientation: from doing to being, from proving to presence, from scarcity (or greed) to sufficiency. “I am worthy without my résumé, when no one is watching, when I don’t launch the next thing, don’t fix, don’t grow, don’t solve, don’t rise. If I am simply here.” To you unhooked, connected, vibrant, shining Eden Self.
1
Note: I was orginally thinking about this in the context of mass displacement, but it can happen in all sorts of microdisplacement from divorce to fading beauty. Even job loss, especially for men, can shine a light on what will happen to people in times of identity challenge. Look at how capitalist systems equate masculinity with productivity, control, and being the provider. Studies show that job loss disproportionately impacts men’s mental health, sense of self-worth, and relational capacity—often triggering depression, isolation, and increased suicide risk. In one large study, men who experienced job loss had 90% higher suicide rates than employed peers, even after adjusting for other factors. Another study showed that men felt shame not just from the financial loss, but from the loss of identity and social status. Because in capitalism, losing a job is not framed as circumstantial. It’s framed as failure of the self: if I’m not earning, I don’t exist. This reveals just how internalized capitalist scripts are—and how deeply they fracture the nervous system during crisis.
