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Comment by J-dawg | Hacker News Reader

Recently I've been reading various books about how to avoid and control excessive anxiety.

One piece of advice that I keep seeing is that I should not worry about things outside of my direct control. This idea is also a central component of stoicism.

How then, should one process terrible news like this? One the one hand, the world is not thinking about climate change enough (certainly politicians aren't).

But on the other hand, it seems impossible to maintain good mental health if one spends too much time thinking about these things. Part of me wants to stick my head in the sand and just get on with life (which seems to be what many people do anyway). How can I read news like this yet remain optimistic and positive?

Maybe global warming deniers, rather than being stupid or brainwashed, are just instinctively better at protecting their own mental health?

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I'd guess you handle terrible news like this the same way you handle great news, by accepting the situation at present and avoiding allowing desires, fear, emotion, etc to control you.

>One piece of advice that I keep seeing is that I should not worry about things outside of my direct control.

this is a typical refrain in totalitarian systems where the common people have no power over their own lives, nevermind things outside their own lives.

idle "worry" is useless. start preparing for the revolution, devolution, or mere evolution that is coming our way.

The problem is that anxiety is warranted in this case. You can’t do anything about solving the problem for everybody, but you can potentially save your own life:

- Work like a madman to get into the 1%.

- Move to a region that is self-sustaining and is little impacted by global warming.

- Buy guns, tools and a farm.

> Buy guns, tools and a farm

Honest question: in the event of some kind of widespread collapse of civilization, there will be hundreds of millions of starving people. For the purpose of this question, I don't think it matters much whether its a 'fast' or 'slow' collapse.

Assuming you have some kind of self sufficient farm and a bunch of guns and other defenses, does it seem likely that you can keep what food you have and what food you can produce in the future from a large number of starving people?

It's not like hordes of people are going to come at your farm like a zombie invasion. The starving people in this scenario will be scattered, scared, and lacking the ability to share information and coordinate themselves.

You could be right...but I encourage you to think that through very carefully. Even in most worst case scenarios of climate change killing most food production, it's a slow process, taking quite a few years.

The people who might eventually come to take by force what someone has as a result of exceptional planning and execution could be the same people who have been politely asking for some extra food for years. And those hungry people have been thinking about it and talking to other hungry people about it for a good long time.

Also: the local government and pseudo-government entities might insist on redistribution. And that redistribution might be entirely legal.

Sure, but honestly I don't plan for the worst case scenario. I could wear a giant airbag around my body when I drive but I don't.

I'm screwed!

I didn't mean to make you feel like that. My reply was trying to say, I feel the same as you, and I'm curious to know how other people manage to be fully aware of climate change yet remain positive and happy.

Diederich's reply to your comment seems to be a good start!

I know, I just forgot the sarcasm tags. But it really feels awful right now. I think I will shut down my computer for today. Take care.

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