2013-12-14
Explanation
The Joke
The comic is titled "The Adventures of Philosophically Inclined Mailman." It follows a mailman who overthinks his job to an absurd degree. He describes the process of mail delivery in increasingly reductive, philosophical terms: paper objects with symbols are placed into containers, where another human retrieves them. He then describes how these symbols are converted by human brains into light patterns that create understanding of abstract concepts. He further describes how the sending machine (a person writing) creates symbols, and a receiving machine (the reader) interprets them, with the letters placed at a geographical point marked by signs. He concludes by declaring himself an "organic machine." In the final panel, a customer interrupts his philosophical reverie by asking him to just put the mail in the mailbox.
The Humor
The humor comes from the absurd contrast between a mundane, everyday job (mail carrier) and the grandiose philosophical framework the mailman uses to describe it. He reduces the entire postal system to its most fundamental physical and philosophical components -- talking about humans as "organic machines," letters as "light patterns," and addresses as "geographical points" -- essentially performing a reductionist philosophical analysis of mail delivery. The punchline comes when a practical-minded customer cuts through all the philosophical musing with the simple request to just put the mail in the mailbox, highlighting how useless (if technically accurate) this level of philosophical analysis is for actually getting things done. The comic satirizes the tendency of philosophically minded people to overcomplicate simple activities.