There is a way out of this slump, but it is difficult. My recommendation is that you spend a period of self-investigation, and then begin to use your moral and aesthetic judgement frequently. This is difficult for many Americans because most of our time up to adulthood is spent in schools, whose major function is to suppress your natural and parent-trained senses of judgement and morality, and instead instill obedience to the directions of various legal and economic authorities:
What I mean by executing your moral and aesthetic judgement: you need to discover what you think is RIGHT vs. what is WRONG, and what is BEAUTIFUL vs. what is UGLY, and begin to make amends for wrong-ness and ugliness in your community and your social circles by adding right-ness and beauty. It could be as simple as looking at a blank wall in your apartment and thinking "that's UGLY, for the entire course of human history people have decorated their dwellings using their own cultural stylings; what is my culture, and what are its stylings?" and then decorating your apartment, or it could be as complex as (to use another commenter's example) looking at homeless people who don't have anything to eat and thinking "that's WRONG, why are people living on the street with no food, how could this problem be rectified?" and feeding them sandwiches or joining groups attempting to mitigated homelessness. (I personally do not think that individuals bringing meals to homeless and poor people is a good or sustainable practice for society, but it doesn't matter; each person needs to develop their own thoughts and opinions on the matter.)
My overall point is that the chief desire of "capitalists, communists, schools, prisons, politicians, profiteers, thieves, predators, etc." is your apathy, both to the moral practices of your society and to the aesthetic decisions displayed to you. As long as you don't care, they can do whatever they want, because you're not going to get in the way. You need to flex your own opinion and become radicalized in applying your own judgement to the things that you see in society. Never assume that "the experts have it under control" or that nothing matters; in fact, society is made up of individual people, of which you are one, and you need to contribute your judgement and effort to the way that society acts and looks, or else everything will seem "small and pointless", as you say.
https://selfdirectededucation.neocities.org/pdf/JTG%20The%20...
What I mean by executing your moral and aesthetic judgement: you need to discover what you think is RIGHT vs. what is WRONG, and what is BEAUTIFUL vs. what is UGLY, and begin to make amends for wrong-ness and ugliness in your community and your social circles by adding right-ness and beauty. It could be as simple as looking at a blank wall in your apartment and thinking "that's UGLY, for the entire course of human history people have decorated their dwellings using their own cultural stylings; what is my culture, and what are its stylings?" and then decorating your apartment, or it could be as complex as (to use another commenter's example) looking at homeless people who don't have anything to eat and thinking "that's WRONG, why are people living on the street with no food, how could this problem be rectified?" and feeding them sandwiches or joining groups attempting to mitigated homelessness. (I personally do not think that individuals bringing meals to homeless and poor people is a good or sustainable practice for society, but it doesn't matter; each person needs to develop their own thoughts and opinions on the matter.)
My overall point is that the chief desire of "capitalists, communists, schools, prisons, politicians, profiteers, thieves, predators, etc." is your apathy, both to the moral practices of your society and to the aesthetic decisions displayed to you. As long as you don't care, they can do whatever they want, because you're not going to get in the way. You need to flex your own opinion and become radicalized in applying your own judgement to the things that you see in society. Never assume that "the experts have it under control" or that nothing matters; in fact, society is made up of individual people, of which you are one, and you need to contribute your judgement and effort to the way that society acts and looks, or else everything will seem "small and pointless", as you say.