Simon South

Somewhere along the line, the word “uncompromising” started to lose its positive connotations and pick up a much different meaning. We used to talk of “an uncompromising commitment to quality.” When the underdog team went on to win the championship, we’d credit the coach’s “uncompromising belief” in his athletes. We’d vote for a politician because of her “uncompromising values.”

Now, however, uncompromising is not something you want to be. It’s the uncompromising employee who gets fired. Schools set up special programmes to deal with uncompromising children. And nobody is ever blamed for leaving an uncompromising spouse.

The word “discriminating” has been co-opted in much the same way. We used to talk about “discriminating good taste” or “a discriminating eye for talent.” Nowadays, discriminating is a slur we use to label the teacher who fails a lazy student or the supervisor who keeps a hateful employee at home.

How did we reach this point?

It reminds me of a remark a manager made to me at my last job. ”You know what your problem is, Simon?”, he said, like so many of the amateur psychologists who keep finding their way into my life. ”Your problem is that you think there’s a right way to do things.”

Well, duh. Of course there’s going to be a right way to do something. At the very least, there will definitely be many wrong ways to do it. Why would you ever claim otherwise? And what does it say about you if you do?

It says you think one thing is just as good as another, that nothing has value in and of itself. It says you think there is no reason to try to stand out, no goal to aim for, no reason to do something better than you did before. It says you have made a firm commitment to mediocrity—something the whole world seems to be obsessed with right now.

I sometimes imagine what this guy thinks to himself as he’s driving down the highway. “Stupid engineers,” I hear him chortling, “thinking there’s a right way to build an overpass.”

At least no one will ever say he’s discriminating.