Really great essay! Just adding to the reading pile here, but David Harvey's 'The Condition of Postmodernity' does a very good job of diagnosing the cultural changes you are describing as the result of material changes to how capitalism works, producing post-modern individualist subjects --- you capture the problem well in this sentence:

"But now that the entire cultural apparatus orients itself around the production of artifacts for the self-actualization of the individual creator, those capacities are effectively taken offline.

files.libcom.org/files/…