Alaska - Day 0 - Honesty

7/2/14

John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York (JFK)

People, by and large, are trusting.  When you tell them that you lost your new AMEX platinum card and that the last guy let you in to the SkyClub by typing in the number on your old card, they believe you.  They don’t think that you let your membership expire 6 years ago.  When you tell security that your lighter is very expensive, they believe you.  They don’t think that you got it free with purchase and only brought it because it was your cheapest lighter in case it got confiscated.  The reason that people tend to be trusting is precisely because people tend to be honest.  Different philosophies hold differing views on why we should be honest, but, excepting nihilism, they almost all agree that we should be honest to people who are honest to us.  Christianity, which can just as easily be viewed as a philosophy as a religion, holds that we should be honest in fear of some form of eternal punishment.  Objectivism would allow dishonesty with people who would initiate force or fraud against you, but, otherwise, it is one of the worst forms of fraud you can commit.  By lying, you subject your sense of reality, your most important asset, to someone in exchange for some minor victory.  You become his slave in exchange for some small amount of money or pleasure or whatever reward may come from the dishonesty.  I think it is fair to sum up the Objectivist reason against dishonesty in a way that most people would accept.  You shouldn’t lie because you do not like the way you feel about yourself when you do.

People who would go with a greater good approach, if my reader will excuse a political rant, such as our current President and Senate Majority Leader, will lie because they think it serves some higher purpose, that they are committing a sacrifice to the greater good by lying in order to each some end.  When they are called out, months or years after the lie, they can point to all the good that came from the lie and apologize for any mistakes that were made.  Nihilism would reject this discussion outright, and I will not argue with anyone who chooses that approach.  I tried nihilism for a few years, and, while I did reap some benefits, I felt crappy about myself, to the point of losing out on far greater potential benefits.  There is almost no lie or series of lies that can be told that are worth sacrificing your self-esteem.  How you feel about yourself, the Final Cause of everything that brings you fulfillment value, outweighs whatever enjoyment value you could reap from the lies.  Other people may not be able to express it so elegantly, but I would venture that 80-90% of the country are very honest people, and, if pressed, would simply answer “That’s just the person I am” or “I don’t like lying” or some other non-committal response.  The end result is simple.  People, for the most part, do not like to lie, which leads to a trusting populace.

The reason I bring this up is that I am bringing a significant amount of cash with me on my trip, but I do not feel apprehensive about keeping it on me.  We will be traveling great distances through abandoned stretches of Alaska and The Yukon, but it is a very safe place.  It is the kind of place where people live and die without telling a single lie, without doubting a single word that anyone else ever speaks.  In sharp contrast to the places I visited on my most recent extended trip, it is not the kind of place where you have to worry about getting robbed on the side of the road.  If my wad of cash fell out of my pocket while hiking, if someone else saw it, they would let me know and not pocket it themselves.  There is a lot to be said about The North, by which I mean Alaska, rural Canada, the Northern Plains/Rockies, Maine, Greenland, and Scandinavia, and not the lands surrounding Winterfell.  It is a culture that is more similar than different from Nome to Helsinki.  I cannot fully explain it, though I have tried to explore it in my reflective entries that I write in those parts.  Every time I am there, I always feel like it is place where I could settle down and live out a calm, relaxing life, except for one small problem: I don’t want a calm, relaxing life.  Where does that leave me?

It leaves me about to embark on a 19-day journey with my best friend through Alaska, Yukon, and the Pacific Northwest.  While we do have some crazy routing planned, there will be no Munich runs, and, by my standards at least, it should be a relaxing trip.  We arrived at the airport three hours before our flight was scheduled to depart, having been delayed an hour and a half.  Delta kept calling the office and my cell with automated messages about the flight change, but I decided to change my schedule.  I would be able to work just as efficiently at the airport as at the office, and there was no harm to arriving early.  I suppose that this should count as Day 0, though the first real activity, other than the Alaska State Capitol will not occur for two days.  I thoroughly packed last night, separating cigars for each Day of Phase One.  I had some issue deleting my old photos off my phone and transferring out my NHL photos, and then phone got all messed up.  Then, it couldn’t recognize my SD Card, and I feared that my photos were lost, which would have been a nightmare scenario.  I had a 9 AM inspection at FIT, and I was worried it might not work for the inspection.  I knew that I could go to the T-Mobile store at lunch.  We went to the first of the two rooms that I needed to inspect, and I took some photos.  The phone was still slow.  I reviewed the photos I took, and then I saw a picture I had taken of Sokol on Sunday.

It took me a minute to realize the significance of that, but then I realized it was reading the SD Card.  I was able to sort out the NHL and Fire Island photos while we were waiting for the door to open for the second room, and, as soon as I got back to the office, I transferred everything to my desktop and deleted them from the phone.  I had a productive work day, and I felt very confident leaving everything in his hands in my absence, certainly more confident than he felt.  I previously wrote about trust, and I trust Matt in every way, which is something that is very rare to find.  I told him to call, text, or email me with any questions.  He asked if he could send a raven, and we were the only ones that got the joke.  We also joked about all the inappropriate things not to say in emails to clients.  After he sent off the first proposal that he did himself from A to Z, I replied, copying a couple of the ladies, “May the Force be with us all.”  I had my traditional pre-departure lunch from Hop Won, getting their special (Sesame Chicken since it was a Wednesday and not a Friday) and boneless spare ribs, picking up my cash on the way and getting lunch for Karen, as well.  I had stopped by the cigar store to say my goodbyes on the way back from the inspection, so I didn’t to stop by again.  I used the rest of my lunch break to print out my paperwork, pack my cigars, and finalize all of the details.

Sokol came up to the office around 4 PM, and they all knew each other from Facebook but had a kick out of meeting in person.  We went down to wait for our car and headed to the airport.  I had no problem with my lighters (I took 2 and Sokol 1), but I thought they were going to take away the one I gave Sokol.  The agent then said that he knew it was expensive and would let him keep it.  We snuck our way into the SkyClub.  We first tried to just walk in but were told we had to check in.  Sokol tried again while I waited on line, and he succeeded.  I was able to BS my way in with my expired platinum card.  We got some drinks and ordered some burgers.  After the burgers, I proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close so that I can publish and we can make our way to the gate.