Winstons I Have Known
I don’t know nor have I known too many Winstons in my life. The name first came into recorded existence in 1880 and since then there have been over 27,000 males recorded with that name. In the most recent year on record, 2018, there were 787 male newborns named Winston in the United States. To put that into perspective, my name, Richard, during that same span of 1880-2018 had 2,574,832 male newborns named and the peak, strangely enough, was in my birth year, 1954, when 57,118 male newborns bore the name Richard in the U.S. All that and Richard is just the seventh most popular male first name, having risen through the ranks from #23 in 1880. I think perhaps the reason for the Winston shortfall may be that the nickname most often used for it is Winnie, which does not sound terribly masculine compared to the nicknames for a name like Richard, which vary from Rich to Rick to Dick, all decidedly more masculine sounding.
If we gave a quiz about “Winstons you have known”, I’m betting that far and away the most popular answer will be Winston Churchill, which shows the rarity of the name since he was born in 1874, died in 1965 and was most famous during his tenure as British Prime Minister from 1940-1945 during WWII. He makes up for all that by being one of the most quoted politicians, along with Abraham Lincoln and a few others like Benjamin Disraeli. And yet, despite that, here I am with two Winstons currently in my day-to-day life.
The first is my neighbor Winston, who is a retired Army Colonel who lives across the street. WInston and I have a good rapport that centers mostly around gardening and household projects. He seems always intrigued by my latest projects and I am always eager to get his input and advice since he is a very practical man with a reasonable knowledge base of how best to do things around the house. He is also the informal liaison between our little community enclave and the County on things like road improvements. It was Winston who worked with the County (he used to work there in a senior administrative capacity) to reach agreement on a local road improvement program. In doing that, he generated a plat map of the community with all the owners’ names and a file of everyone’s email and telephone number. He is probably better known across the 40-50 families that live up on this hill than anyone else. It doesn’t hurt that he is also in the habit of walking every day with his sun hat and walking cane, up and down the roads that he took aim at keeping in good condition. Whenever there is a road question in the hood, Winston is the go-to guy even though others have started to take over those relationship duties now.
The other Winston currently in my life is a student in my class on Business Law, Policy and Ethics. That class is almost half way through at this point and the format is all about debate over ethical issues as they affect the world of business. There is no shortage of current events to draw from to debate the merits of differing ethical positions. While I formulated the agenda of ethical topics several months ago, I am forever coming across articles in the news that highlight those points very timely and poignantly. The national political landscape and the geopolitical landscape are especially ripe with such topics and events. I can’t tell if this is a function of the specific moment in history we are going through or whether this is always the case. Given that this is the first time I am teaching an ethics course and therefore thinking about ethical issues in a construct almost every day, it may just be that I am seeing ethics swirl around in a way that feels unique but actually is quite the norm. In general, I default to thinking we are in an unusual time and there is enough evidence that we haven’t been in as conflicted a moment like this since 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I certainly didn’t invent that sentiment, it is bouncing off the walls in every other article I read these days.
What this does to the conversation about ethics is quite interesting. I’m searching for an adequate analogy, but the best one that comes to mind is that discussing the rules or Tidily Winks during a Super Bowl game makes it hard to see the value in the Tidily Wink rules. There are many important ethical issues that arise in business every day. They are not all about life or nuclear death, but they are nonetheless important to discuss because they represent the most likely issues these students will confront in their early careers. So, overly time I see something on the geopolitical stage that relates directly to the ten or so key themes we are addressing in the course, I like to clip the article and send it to the class to factor into their thinking.
The other day, my friend Steve, who presented the class with its first debate issue, sent his friends an email with an editorial from a writer he admires who spoke to the issues of Putin and Ukraine in the context of individual freedom versus the common good. As I said, it was an opinion piece, but I too thought it was succinct and well-stated, so I forwarded it to the class since this week’s guest speaker will be addressing that same issue, not so much in the context of Putin or the Ukraine, but more in the general collectivist sense. Well, without presuming too much about Winston’s world view, he emailed me (the only one in the class to do so since this is technically still Spring Break week) to voice his disagreement with what he considered the partisan view of the piece rather than the journalistic aspects of it. He referred to Putin as a figurehead who didn’t deserve all the blame for what’s happening in Ukraine. It sounded a lot like Tucker Carlson to me.
But here;s the thing, I have made of point of telling the students that it is important to hear out all views on a subject and that it is an important ethical norm to do so and defend people’s right to differing views. Indeed, my whole reason for inviting this week’s guest speaker is to be sure to expose the students to a very different perspective to mine. I understand that even though I try to maintain some degree of balance in my commentary so as not to proselytize my political views, they surely come through loud and clear. I am certain my class knows where I stand. i contend that talking ethics makes it much harder to disguise your underlying views, though for all I know it is a rookie ethics teacher mistake.
Winston’s email, which I found it necessary to respond to to clarify that opinion pieces are OK and the facts around Putin as the source of discord and destruction in Ukraine are very broadly held at this point and not so very partisan. Nevertheless, I am glad that Winston sent me that wake up call to remind me that I am teaching a mandatory ethics course in a graduate BUSINESS program and that it is likely that there are some conservative thinkers in the group…or maybe even more than some. While I haven’t known a lot of Winstons, they do always seem to stand up for what they believe in, no matter how unpopular it may be. That is something I want to teach my students to respect, so thank you, Winston.