M Nabeel Abid Bhatti
It is always detrimental when the pursuit of intellect turns into a myth, rooted in the fundamental misreading and misinterpretation of writers. A discourse has recently taken root on social media platforms and been echoed by journalists in their podcasts, claiming that reading so-called pessimist philosophers like Camus, Kafka, and Dostoevsky cultivates despair and suicidal tendencies among their readers. This intellectually bankrupt view hides beneath the moral pretext of “saving humanity.” In reality, such thinking diverts our attention from courageously confronting the honest truths — from probing the actual systemic, material, and socio-psychological structures of our society that pave the way to the ultimate defeat of a frustrated mind. Despair is never created by these writers; it has always existed — they merely translate it. They give language to the chaos, disillusionment, and silent anguish already embedded in our social and psychological life. When a person chooses to end their life, it is not because of the absurd truth of existence, but because of a state of frustration in which they can neither express their pain nor find anyone worthy of receiving it. The real question, therefore, is what transforms the inherent absurdity of life into a fog of frustration. What conditions, material or moral, catalyse a human being’s longing to turn the final page? The answer is twofold. First, the individual is unable to articulate what they feel and remains in constant conflict within their own mind. Second, the dictatorial structures and work environments of our society leave them no moment for reflection or self-understanding. These problems can only be addressed by allowing individuals to engage with writers who can help them make sense of their chaotic thoughts. Yet at a broader level, the structural and systemic roots of this crisis must also be recognised and reformed.Philosophers and novelists, then, perform a deeply humane act: they give voice to what we cannot say, allow us to recognize, rather than be consumed by, our pain. Camus, so often called a pessimist, cast suicide as a cop-out from the human condition; Kafka’s anxiety and Dostoevsky’s torment were never calls to despair but attempts to understand the fractured human spirit. Their darkness is not destructive—it is diagnostic. What genuinely deepens despair is not reading too much but thinking too little. A society that mocks reflection, that fears questioning, and equates study with madness breeds a deeper sickness—the suffocation of intellect. Here, introspection is mistaken for sickness, and silence for stability. To think deeply is to be lonely, and it is that loneliness, not philosophy, that corrodes the mind. These thinkers remind us that consciousness itself is salutary—that rebellion, clarity, and voice are antidotes to despair. The tragedy is not that our youth reads Camus but that it lives in a world that has become so drained of meaning that his honesty feels insupportable. The task of healing, then, requires confrontation with the moral and material vacuity of our age, not the vilification of the mirrors that reflect it.