Hanoi, Vietnam

If you have ever seen an artistic rendering of a prehistoric caveman sitting around the campfire with his buddies, you may have thought, boy, we’ve come a long way! Or then again, if you’re like me, maybe you didn’t think this at all.

It’s easy to forget the incredible changes the world has seen since 10,000 B.C. For that matter, it’s easy to forget the changes in just the last few generations. In the photo above, for instance, an Air Asia flight attendant is greeting me as I board a multi-ton contraption that will soon be airborne.  Or, as comedian Louis CK so well put it, in boarding that plane I would very soon be “sitting in a chair in the sky.”

Many may have already seen the four-minute clip of Louis CK’s appearance on Conan O’Brien in October 2008. Watching it again recently, I appreciated anew how the monologue reminded me of two things, even as I laughed.

First, that the 21st century is fast. Computers for example, even when slow, are a bit faster than in 1956, or even 2006. Second, I was reminded that it isn’t too difficult to be a thankless, self-centered jerk. Louis CK says of one man angered by his airplane’s malfunctioning wifi: “How quickly the world owes him something he knew existed only ten seconds ago.”

So when I board a plane in Hanoi, I’ve come a long way from our ancestors sitting in a cave and gnawing on the leg of some wild fowl, for I can sit in a chair in the sky (not to mention take a break from food gathering to travel). To bring this a little closer to home, if I and 250 others board a flight in St. Louis to fly to San Francisco, I’m part of a society that has come a long way here too. For in only several hours we’re doing what 150 years ago would have taken many months, and in which some of the group would have surely died.

That’s pretty nice, if you think about it. Almost makes the thought of sitting on the tarmac for an hour or two a small thing.

If you enjoyed the Louis CK clip and would like the backstory and more, check out this seven-minute video interview with Time magazine. Similar to the endnotes in each chapter of Rolf’s Marco Polo Didn’t Go There, at about the two-minute point Louis CK reveals one way he plays with detail to make a better story.