It's a matter of perspectives

A brain that functions as well as your legs do... is it a brain worthy of praise or one of shame?

Sometimes, it is the perspective that one has to take into account rather than the object itself. We may say that something looks aesthetically ugly, but ultimately it is us who make that judgement. There is no value to things but what we tag them with.

Money. Cold hard cash. This is the simplest example I can come up with. Look at that piece of $50 note in your hand. Stare at it. What do you see? The poor sees it as a form of relief. The rich sees it as another form of 'bonus'. You see it as what it can buy you. You attribute it to be equivalent of something you want. Does that mean that money has a physical, real value? Not really.

Imagine yourselves trapped on a deserted island, perhaps one like in the 'Lost' television series. Would you have any need for money? The rhetorical answer, I believe, is no. The tribesman of prehistoric world may see no value in money because they indulge in barter trade. The irony here, however, is that there is no difference between barter trade and cash as both serve as a product of perspective. If your perspective treats money as useless and unwanted, it would remain so. If you hunger for wealth because money satisfies your needs and wants, then money has a value to it. Similarly, if you trade your chicken for your neighbour's duck, it means that you value the duck as something of equivalence to your chicken, and that you value the duck more because you FEEL that you needed a duck more than a chicken. This instinct weigh the importance of something over another by itself is something so intrinsic that it is impossible to stop or realise, simply because it is in Man's nature and we do so without thinking.

The next time you claim something to be unworthy, think- 'this is my perspective and it's important to me; but how much is my view worth to some other person?'