[senguidev]

I'm immensely lucky to live a comfortable life in a democratic country. So you're right, there is probably a blindspot here. Good faith sounds definitely more fit for a kinder and more open environment.

However, there were no such "kind" environments a few centuries ago. Yet they managed to be bootstraped against their surroundings. So maybe there is clues that we underestimate the strength of "high-skilled good faith" strategies in adversarial situations? But again, I can't really imagine what it's like to live in authoritarian states so my thoughts must not be very relevant here.

I've seen Rules for rulers previously and remember it pretty well as it was quite instructive. It didn't provide enough guiding answers for me to the question "And so, knowing that, how should I behave to live my best possible life ??"