I See Dead Cars: A Mailman's Daily Trip Down Memory Lane
What's happening
A mailman is sharing observations about abandoned and deteriorating vehicles he encounters on his daily postal route. His reflections use classical philosophy to frame how our perceptions shape our experiences with these forgotten cars.
Who's involved
A postal carrier whose routine work brings him into contact with decaying automobiles in neighborhoods across his delivery area. Car and Driver, the automotive publication, is covering this mailman's philosophical perspective on vehicles left to rot.
Why it matters
The story captures how ordinary workers witness urban decay and automotive waste in ways that mainstream culture often overlooks. It bridges practical, everyday observation with philosophical inquiry, suggesting that how we perceive neglected thingsâwhether cars or broader societal declineâreflects our own mindsets rather than objective reality.
The story
A mail carrier's daily rounds have become an unintended catalog of automotive mortality. Each street he walks reveals cars in various states of abandonment: rusted frames, flat tires, windshields clouded with grime, vehicles that have not moved in months or years. According to Car and Driver, this mailman has begun reflecting on what these dead cars represent and what they say about the neighborhoods and the people who leave them behind.
His observations are framed through an unexpected lens: the ancient Stoic philosophy of Epictetus. The first-century Greek philosopher, who spent much of his life in Rome before his banishment to Nicopolis in northwestern Greece, left behind a striking assertion about human suffering and perception. "Men are tormented with the opinions they have of things, not by the things themselves," Epictetus wrote. The mailman has adopted this framework to understand his daily encounters with derelict vehicles. The cars themselves are simply metal and rust; the torment comes from the stories we construct around them and the decline they symbolize.
This philosophical angle proves surprisingly apt for examining urban landscapes where abandoned cars accumulate. A vehicle left to decay on a residential street tells a storyâof financial hardship, of broken dreams, of neighborhoods that no longer attract investment or care. But the mailman's application of Epictetus suggests that our distress at seeing such decay is not caused by the rusted metal itself but by the narrative we overlay on it. We torment ourselves with interpretations: decline, abandonment, loss.
What makes this observation particularly resonant is how it challenges viewers to examine their own relationship with decay. The mailman encounters these cars not as a mechanic analyzing mechanical failure, nor as a real estate appraiser measuring neighborhood depreciation, but simply as a person who passes them every working day. His position gives him an unusual vantage pointâconsistent, repeated, unglamorous exposure to the material consequences of economic and personal misfortune.
The broader implications touch on how we process urban decline and environmental decay. If our suffering comes not from the things themselves but from our opinions of them, then perhaps the antidote is not only material restorationâcleaning up the streets, removing abandoned vehiclesâbut also a shift in how we interpret what we see. This does not dismiss the real problems these abandoned cars represent. Rather, it suggests that even while we work to address the underlying causes of automotive and urban decay, we might benefit from examining the stories we tell ourselves about what these objects mean.