What I'm saying, out of sympathy, is that you should consider a higher perspective. Maybe it's lack of care, just as an example, and maybe it's prejudice with reasons far beyond your control or sheer ignorance and so on. Now your writing gives of the feeling of things being muddled up in your head, not understood to the end, "clouded by emotion!" ;) Gotta snap out of it or you'll spent years malding like many do.
Design is not a thing that can die. It will exist for as long as the human race does. And so will shallowness, tastelessness, ignorance, self importance, agendas and marketing turkey cocks. Don't mix them together my friend, cheer up.
If you don't go beyond standard interactions and look it's probably fine but let's say I want system chrome to look like the one in photoshop and some custom dropdowns for starters...
No there isn't (with resigned sobbing tone) there isn't. Everything GUI related on desktop is depressing prehistoric garbage that still takes ages to make and if god forbid you want something nice you might as well shoot your self.
My hard to follow but sincere advice would be - run. I think you know what you are doing and by the looks of things already know or at least feel where it's getting you. Be a little nicer to your self (and don't be stupid).
If tribal ideology is all you are fighting then maybe. But it's a big maybe. Crap is crap. It will not get any less crappier if you get more diverse crap. If a person is not developing intellectually he'll take on some other BS that will be equally stupid. All effort in vain (unless that was the actual goal all the time).
This is quite fun actually! Tried different philosopher combinations. Get Alcoholics Anonymous recommendations for quite a few until I add Schopenhauer. And if you are a Rand, Rowling reading techie, apparently, you should read more Eddo-Lodge, Baldwin and Chomsky... Brightened my day, thnx.
P.S. Are you sure this thing isn't pushing people from one echo chamber to another?
They did. If you're talking people of a certain caliber (Bret Victor etc.) I think they were dying for a wile now. There's just lots of guys all over the world in different companies doing essentially the same thing over and over again, no real innovation, no desire for it.
It's more common than you'd think. The fact that you still care after all this time and also admit that you can't is actually commendable and very rare. There's nothing worse than an idiot dev who thinks he "has developed a sense". Congratulations on avoiding that fate for 22 years in row ;)