Thanks Carl, it's a really interesting question, and you've already named for us some of the ways it could be approached.  But these also suggest that the question is immense, both general and specific, anecdotal and theoretical, and that it could be hard to develop a satisfactory understanding of it except by specifying it in terms of different domains (the postwar economy, consumer culture, the possible failure of the major twentieth-century political ideologies; but also the nature of mass media, changes in education, and so on).  Still the general question asks itself, and each way we could try to answer (or dismiss it) it might produce a different sort of politics.

I'm particularly interested in the status of committed politics, or what we could call overt ideology.  It seems to me that nationalism, communism and capitalism now appear inadequate to many people, as you suggest.  (I'm not so sure religion belongs in the same category, even if it might be treated as a different sort of ideology; it seems to be gaining currency in many places rather than declining.  And maybe the same could be said of nationalism.)

There could be theoretical grounds for this skepticism about ideology.  Reading contemporary political philosophers, I can recognize strands of Marxist critique, but seldom classical communism.

Obviously there's also a broader tendency, outside the academic world, to believe that political ideologies are inadequate or even bad or evil.  This probably has long roots in the argument that Soviet-style communism and Nazism were two sides of the same coin.  (The argument was strongly put by F. A. von Hayek in The Road to Serfdom, but circulates in American popular culture too, and in journalism about Stalin.)  Partly too it might be a question of cynicism; or of media spectacle and feelings of alienation from the political world.  I'm not sure how to untangle these strands.  My sense is that there is a confluence of mollifying effects of liberalism and consumer culture, a cynical political realism, and also an increased subtlety in political thought.

Having not really added anything to your clues, I'll try a different, anecdotal approach to the question.

A few years ago, I saw a nice documentary film from Japan entitled The New God (Atarashii Kamisama), which follows a Japanese punk band committed to extreme right-wing politics.  (The band supported the return to a militaristic emperor system in Japan, associating the nation's pacifist constitution with American imperialism.)  What stands out in my memory is the way that the band members, especially the female lead singer, acknowledged without too much difficulty that their politics came from a desire for some kind of commitment and solidarity, and that the particular form it took was secondary.  The singer even visits North Korea with a left-wing friend; in a later interview on midnighteye.com, she says she was "kind of a North Korea otaku you could say"--pretty striking for an ultra-nationalist reactionary, but I want to put the emphasis on otaku [something like 'fanboy'], which makes explicit the role of feeling.  The film develops an account of contemporary Japan as a consumer society in which other forms of social tie are breaking down; and it makes a surprisingly touching portrait of the singer.  Though the context is quite specifically Japanese, the analysis isn't, really; it's a strong version of the idea of modernity as dissociation.  In the face of these ways of feeling, maybe it isn't so hard to imagine a re-emergence of explicit political ideology.  If this should happen, we might assume it would take the form of a conservatism (since conservatisms tend to think of themselves in terms of social stability and traditional values).  Yet even Obama's victory in the US (though he's hardly radical) seemed to bring with it a kind of strong feeling of political engagement and solidarity for many people.  One thing The New God suggests, though, is the way that such a politics can still be cynical.

[I'd like to mention here, as a kind of postscript for anyone interested in the theoretical aspects of the question, that Ernesto Laclau has written often about the difficulties facing any radical politics; and others, like Homi Bhabha, have addressed the question in terms of questions of identity and feeling.  If political action requires some kind of solidarity, how can we project it when every form of solidarity is problematic?  I'm afraid I've made the question sound like Hamlet wringing his hands, but I'd like to take it instead as an historical question about the state of politics today, and not just a theoretical dilemma.]

Can we interchange the word cynical with apathetic? Has material consumption overshadowed personal growth?

I think from the western world it is hard to see past this cynical viewpoint, because development has gotten to the point where almost everyone lives above the poverty line of the rest of the world. The west is just piling luxury upon luxury. But, having traveled minimally, I think though perhaps the larger ideologies and causes you listed have lost steam, there are a lot of localized movements that would be indignant to be called apathetic.

And, if it is possible to consider science and technology as an ideology, then there is wealth of evidence that would refute or at least challenge the growth of cynicism. And while material possessions obviously become more significant, there are also amazing innovations in the background revolutionizing the war on poverty.

I think it is easy to see the cynicism when we look inside our own borders (speaking from the United States). It exists on every corner and in every school that values the ipod more than the textbook. But when we look a little harder, outside our own realm of experience, there are movements that begin in our country but travel outside to where they are needed. I'm thinking of groups like TED talks and Peace Corps that take on a global effort starting from our western homes.

Though I must say it is disheartening to see among my generation that nothing has changed in the minds of the youth since Obama's election. He hasn't rallied us into any sort of political efficacy and though he may have inspired hope that was non-existent under George Bush, he hasn't inspired any sort of responsibility on the part of the citizen.

The truly efficacious among us are looking abroad to make changes, because that is where we find a community that needs us. When we look at our own neighborhoods we don't see ourselves. We are global citizens now.

Cynicism can only be understood in the context of expectations, and the contents of peoples' expectations change with history. Much of the impression of cynicism is probably due as much to the phrasing of the question as anything else. For the early 1800's, a different set of political considerations existed because people expected political redress through violent rebellion -- when twentieth century states demonstrated that they could stomp armed citizen movements, people became cynical about this simplistic form of violent resistance.

Much of the logic of twentieth century politics stemmed from the idea that there's a stable relationship between the genesis of an ideology and the final form of the regime it produces. I'd argue that much about the history of the century gave people good reason to reconsider that assumption. One problem with ideology is that it confuses consistency in the abstract, in the mind of one person, with the truth as it appears to the millions of different people who make up a society; this can explain somewhat why two radically different ideologies can produce very similar movements, regimes and societies.

Among my generation, I am more often disturbed by credulity and lack of skepticism than by cynicism. I don't mean to assert that cynicism is the same as wisdom, only that more of the people I know err toward strong belief, than doubt. It's just that the hopes of the twentieth century - global and universalist, mostly, with emphasis on consensus and mass action - are bled dry by various "closed" debates of the same period. People my age seem more fired up with hope to change things like alienation, anomie and dissociation in modern environments -- the really telling clue, to me, as to the lines of force in our era, is that today's activists seem more interested in change that can occur outside the political system. Indicating, possibly, that if there is one subject people are terminally sick of, it's how (or whether, or whether it's possible) to fix our ailing democracy.