As a remedy to life in society I would suggest the big city. Nowadays, it is the only desert within our means.

Camus’s paradox turns the modern metropolis into a kind of spiritual “desert.” If society feels suffocating—full of roles, chatter, and moral posturing—the big city can paradoxically provide anonymity and solitude amid crowds. The “remedy” is not escape into nature (often inaccessible “within our means”) but a withdrawal-in-plain-sight: the capacity to be alone, to observe, and to recover inward freedom while remaining in the social world. The line also critiques modernity’s impoverished access to genuine wilderness; what remains is an urban substitute where one can experience distance, silence of the self, and a stripped-down confrontation with one’s own thoughts.