The Marketplace Ate the Sacred

Now What?

Note: This post isn’t about rejecting capitalism. It’s about noticing the places where it’s begun to shape not just our markets, but our minds—and wondering aloud what else might be possible. If you feel like something essential is being eaten away by the logic of endless growth, monetization, productivity, optimization, you’re not alone. There may be a deeper story at play—and new roles we’re being asked to step into.

I joined a conversation yesterday about the Constitution. A deep dive into rights, structures, systems. At one point, someone offered a familiar defense: Capitalism is the best system we’ve got. It’s lifted millions out of poverty. Sure, it’s messy right now, but we just need to regulate it. Reign it back in a bit.

It wasn’t a bad argument, one I’ve heard before. It was thoughtful, pragmatic. But something about it didn’t sit right with me.

It missed the deeper issue—the part we rarely talk about. The spirit inside the machine.

Capitalism isn’t just a set of rules or market dynamics. It’s a story. A myth. A force that’s taken on a life of its own. And like any force that grows too powerful, it starts to shape us more than we shape it.

Two names come to mind, the names of two beings: Moloch and Wetiko.

Moloch is an ancient god, a difficult god—one people in ancient times once fed their children to in the hope of prosperity. Those days are thankfully over … These days, we sacrifice differently: our time, health, natural ecosystems—all in the name of progress, of competition, of gaining advantage … and ultimately, all in the name of endless, unquestioned growth.

The other being or energy is Wetiko¹, which comes from Indigenous teachings—it’s a mind-virus of greed. A hunger that devours others to feed itself. That kind of hunger lives in the bones of capitalism now. It shows up in boardrooms, in press conferences, in startup decks. In lifestyle brands and productivity hacks. We find it in many place, and it whispers that more is never enough.

Like my father used to say, perfect is the enemy of the good; what’s good enough can always be better.

Signs of the sacred, even in the territory of Moloch. Even here, life pushes through.

When people say capitalism “isn’t working right now,” I wonder: maybe this is how it works. Maybe when you build a system with growth as its god, these spirits inevitably take the throne. You can regulate behavior, sure—but how do you regulate a worldview?

Because this isn’t just about policy. It’s about possession, like being possessed by a being. We’ve built an economic being, an egregore—a collective thought-form that now rules back over us. It colonizes every corner of life, turning even sacred things into products.

Even spaces that feel immune—like spirituality, healing, or self-development—aren’t spared. What begins as personal or communal transformation often becomes a product: tiered pricing, early-bird offers, affiliate links. The deeper the practice, the more polished the marketing funnel.

I’ve seen it firsthand. A large group I help moderate started to shift when commercial posts crept in—coaching packages, digital offers, subtle ads woven into comments. The tone changed. Conversations grew quieter, more cautious. We suddenly had to ask: Are we a community? Or are we a marketplace now?

Or take something as simple as street parking—once free and shared by all, now rationed and monetized. We have to get residential permits for an annual fee. Or water—life itself, sold back to us in branded, single-use plastic that ends up in nature.

We rarely question it, because it all feels so normal.

That’s the genius of the egregore. It makes you believe there’s no alternative.

Even the language gives it away. Why is it called “the economy” and not, say, “the abundance”? Why do we track GDP down to the decimal but not generosity, not joy, not the health of the soil or the strength of community?

Still—I don’t believe the answer is to tear everything down.

What we need now is a kind of economic soul retrieval. A remembering.

We can’t just fight Moloch and Wetiko—they’re too powerful. Rather, we have to invoke different spirits. Different archetypes. Ways of being that reintroduce care, connection, and enoughness into the center of how we live.

We need the Steward—someone who tends the whole, who acts not just for now but for the seventh generation. The steward protects what can’t be monetized: forests, oceans, relationships, rituals.

We need the Healer—who sees the fractures and says, this doesn’t have to stay broken. The healer restores not just the body, but the spirit of things. They remind us that value doesn’t always come from efficiency, but from depth, presence, and repair.

We need the Weaver—the one who sees the connections, who brings the pieces back together. The weaver creates systems rooted in reciprocity and mutuality, designing economies that nourish community instead of extracting from it.

And we need the Nourisher—the one who reminds us that sufficiency is sacred. That slower isn’t lesser, and rest is not laziness. That we are not here just to produce or consume. That tending a garden, making a meal, or holding a child isn’t unproductive—it’s everything. In a culture that worships speed and output, the Nourisher returns us to a deeper rhythm. One where presence matters more than performance, and where enough is finally enough.

These archetypes live in us already. In our quieter instincts. In our longing for meaning. In our fatigue with the hustle and the grind.

Air, for now, is still free.

But how long until that changes?

We don’t have to wait for permission to begin something new. We can protect what’s sacred—not because we can profit from it, but because it’s worth honoring. We can remember that some things aren’t meant to be owned. That not all value can be measured.

The system we have isn’t the end of the story.

We made this world.

We can dream—and build—another.

1. Wetiko: A concept originating in the spiritual teachings of the Algonquian-speaking peoples of North America, Wetiko (also spelled Wendigo or Windigo) describes a psychic and spiritual sickness rooted in greed, cannibalism, and consumption without satiation. It has been explored by Indigenous scholars like Jack D. Forbes (Columbus and Other Cannibals) and expanded upon by writer and spiritual teacher Paul Levy in his book Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil, where he describes it as a collective mind-virus infecting modern culture—particularly through capitalism, disconnection, and unconscious shadow projection.

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