Mason’s basic thesis is that the rise of information technology over the past 25 years has created three main forces towards what he dubs the “post-capitalist” society. First, it has reduced the need for humans to work; second, abundant and free information is dismantling the bedrock of scarcity that capitalism stands upon; and third, technology has created the means for non-market driven collaborative goods, services, and organizations to emerge.

This idea that we are on the edge of something new is something that many of my generation have felt acutely, especially in the somewhat “hippie” circles in which I travel. Whereas our parents might think that a proper life path involves a stable job and a mortgage, most of my friends are abandoning high paying careers en masse to pursue travel, find jobs that are more meaningful for far less money, become organic farmers, or start ecovillages. To many of the scarcity mindset, making such decisions is seen as naive and irresponsible, but in this age of incredible overabundance (at least in developed countries) it seems to increasingly more people the much wiser path.

Whereas our parents might think that a proper life path involves a stable job and a mortgage, most of my friends are abandoning high paying careers en masse to pursue travel, find jobs that are more meaningful for far less money, become organic farmers, or start ecovillages.

Right out of college, I landed a well-paid job at a top agency in Los Angeles. The job and the lifestyle were quite cushy: a fridge always stocked with beer and wine, flexible hours, swimming pool, gym, raging company parties. Despite the fun environment and all the perks, I still felt like a cog in a machine, helping to sell more crap to people that really don’t need more crap. Because of capitalism’s dependence on exponential growth, and the environmental and social disasters that growth clearly continues to cause, the kind of bleak attitude I felt towards my work was virtually unavoidable when I stopped to think about what I was doing. Not only did my work not have any meaning to me personally, but the planet and humanity would actually be better off if I, and indeed most of us, did something else with our time.

The term Senior-itis is used to describe the decrease in motivation towards school often experienced by students who are about to graduate. What I was suffering from at my job, and what I think many of my generation are suffering from, is something I’ll call ‘Capitalism-itis’. ‘Capitalism-itis’ is a collective sense that the world as we know it is about to change, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense to invest ourselves in the status quo. We don’t know what’s next, but we know that it has to be substantially different from the world today if we are going to survive as a species. This feeling can cause us to be unmotivated and discouraged, even paralyzed.

‘Capitalism-itis’ is a collective sense that the world as we know it is about to change, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense to invest ourselves in the status quo. We don’t know what’s next, but we know that it has to be substantially different from the world today if we are going to survive as a species.

But don’t worry, there are many good remedies for ‘Capitalism-itis’! It is possible to turn that melancholy into motivation once we realize that opportunities abound for ushering in what’s next and starting to form the new world. This is being made increasingly possible through the same forces that Mason suggests are undermining capitalism to begin with: the free sharing of information and creation of collaborative co-creative platforms via the internet. Websites like thepoosh.org, simbi.com, ecobasa.org, movingworlds.org, tribewanted.com, and numundo.org are creating ways for people to trade skills, learn about regenerative living, and support worthy organizations and ecovillage projects through moneyless transactions.

Websites like thepoosh.org, simbi.com, ecobasa.org, movingworlds.org, tribewanted.com, and numundo.org are creating ways for people to trade skills, learn about regenerative living, and support worthy organizations and ecovillage projects through moneyless transactions.

Six years ago, when I did finally sell all my things and go travel, none of these options existed. Luckily, I serendipitously stumbled upon a developing ecovillage called InanItah in Nicaragua, where I discovered a passion for natural building and community living. I ended up staying for three years, playing a pivotal role in day-to-day operations through marketing, event organizing, administrative management and conflict mediation. I made next to no money for doing those things, but I was the happiest I’d ever been. At InanItah I met many other people who had done similar things, who had also left seemingly great jobs to travel and live more simply. I started to feel like I wasn’t crazy, like the choices that I had made, though scary and difficult and entirely contrary to society’s definition of success, were perhaps good choices after all.

That is the same feeling that I got from reading “The end of capitalism has begun”, and how I often feel from reading Charles Eisenstein’s books or learning about things like Integral Theory– that how I feel and what drives me individually is a reflection of many external and collective forces that can makes sense when you take time to zoom out and put the pieces together. That if my plans for retirement don’t involve a comfortable pension, but rather, buying land in a place with clean water and growing my own food, that maybe on the macro level as well as the micro level that makes a lot of sense, and might even be the wisest thing I could do.