The problem afflicting all of the superpowers, perhaps: the necessity that the politically unacceptable but meritorious folks be able to secure a minimal existence within the civilization. Beneficient corporate purposiveness has its antinomies.
Before the conflict started, I mused about heading to Siberia, with its 19th c. wooden buildings preserved in the cold, to find a small university (somehow with English language instruction) and study and live simply. Infinitely preferable to being caught up in what passes for the political world presently. Dostoevsky wept when he read Hegel's pronouncement that the remote place that he was in was outside history, though. But if the centers of things are caught up in false ways of thinking, perhaps it is better to live deliberately. History is the consciousness of history. If, at the center of things, only those who don't understand are allowed to play a role, then perhaps the nature of history (as we know it, a relatively recent vocabulary for parsing experience) itself has changed.
Back to the books.