Controversial topic but...

[Rev. Rye]

In my experience and research, we tend to be of two minds on this issue.

First, we have the universal system of morality, where all people are created equal, and all that sort of thing. This is honestly more prevalent in theory than in practice, because, well, an ideology where everyone is valued is one where you are valued.

Second, we tend to value people with certain characteristics over those without those characteristics. What said characteristics are tend to vary from person to person, and are dictated largely by those characteristics people have (or believe they have) or want to have, or less commonly, characteristics shared by people they have lived with and grown to admire. These can be anything from abstract characteristics (like courage) to physical characteristics. This is more prevalent in practice, because, unfortunately, it's built into human nature. There's a finite limit to the number of people the average person can have stable relationships with, and the commonly accepted number is 150 (there is some debate about the number, and I have heard some estimates saying the number is as high as 290, but this doesn't make it much better). And to treat the human mind like a computer, this isn't just some problem that some software (new beliefs) can fix, this is a hardware limitation built into the human neocortex, like trying to run a new program with a lot of bytes on a Commodore 64 with 64 kb of memory. I strongly suspect that this is the reason bigotry came about: as horrible as it is, it's a convenient way of narrowing down your pool of potential relationships. And that's why, in practice, the universal view will always be more theoretical than practical. Why, yes, that does suck.

[Belacqua]

So based on perceived intelligence (though he was in fact extremely bright and intuitive, just not broadly or socially), on appearance and perceived attitude, he wasn't worth a shit.

I can't answer the bigger question, but I think you make an important point here. 

People are really complex. It's very hard to pass judgment on fuzzy qualities like intelligence. When we try, we're likely to use obvious and contingent values like how much money they've made, or how "successful" they look from a social standpoint. 

Maybe the difficulty of judging quality should push us towards a sort of tentative default -- since our yardsticks are flawed, best to err on the side of compassion.

[mordant]

So based on perceived intelligence (though he was in fact extremely bright and intuitive, just not broadly or socially), on appearance and perceived attitude, he wasn't worth a shit.

I can't answer the bigger question, but I think you make an important point here. 

People are really complex. It's very hard to pass judgment on fuzzy qualities like intelligence. When we try, we're likely to use obvious and contingent values like how much money they've made, or how "successful" they look from a social standpoint. 

Maybe the difficulty of judging quality should push us towards a sort of tentative default -- since our yardsticks are flawed, best to err on the side of compassion.

I can agree with you on substance here. I've known a heck of a lot of "complex" people in my time. Our ability to be butthurt or to feel insecure or unmanned or disappointed by Other People is all out of proportion, generally, to how much they intend to evoke such emotions in us. We have a strong tendency to take things more personally than justified or necessary. As such ... compassion, empathy, self awareness of our own role, and epistemological humility are better things to strive for then to control or punish or exclude or ignore others for failure to "measure up" to our personal standards.

The problem of course is doing all that while avoiding being truly weak and manipulated. Always lots of fun threading THAT needle. But I can testify that more often than not, my first "read" on something that bothers, disappoints or offends me in someone else's conduct tends to be lacking in empathy and weighted with negative assumptions, and I've learned not to rush to judgment.