Thoughts From A Correspondent On Living In A Declining Empire

A correspondent writes in:

One reason for the collapse of empires is that the knowledge needed for maintenance of the empire is closely held and actively suppressed because it is in the short-run interest of an oligarchy to suppress it. For example, only a small circle of the Russian Communist Party had access to economic reports. It was the same in China. It could be dangerous to have certain kinds of knowledge, and yet things could fall apart without that it being widely diffused in the right hands.

Our public discourse is choked with lies:

"you end up with an entire society in an hallucinatory state, and behaving like people who hallucinate will: we’ll respond to things that aren’t there, and fail to see the ones that are[...]" [link]

Things to do to compensate for these lies are to:

• Withdraw respect and consent.
• Get interested in epistemology, i.e., the study of how we know what we know.
• Listen for contradictions.
• Listen for admissions against interest.
• Be widely educated in science and technology so as to see contradictions between manipulative lies and well-established scientific principals.
• Throw your TV away.
• Cancel your newspaper.
• Turn your radio off, except for music.
• Watch for contradictions between manipulative lies and your own direct experience.
• Listen to a liar's story change as his motive's change.
• Depend on the life experience of smart old people who have no conflict of interest with you.
• Shun any news medium, person or definable interest group that you catch in a lie.
• Shorten your supply chains. The longer your supply chain, the bigger the proportion of people at the other end who don't care if you are dead
• Get as much of your food as possible from people you know. Grow the rest.
• Realize that medicine is a business that makes money by selling drugs and procedures. It is not your mom.
• Rely on plants, fatty acids, amino acids, vitamins and minerals for healing.
• Eat right and stay fit to stay well.
• Stay out of restaurants to get the best ingredients and the cook with the cleanest hands. 
• Avoid surgeons and hospitals.
• Avoid prescription drugs. Find natural substitutes
• Grow as much of your medicine as you can.
• Avoid depending on the truthfulness of strangers.
• Stay away from crowds to stay away from trouble. Use amenities in off hours.