substance

Not many people think in terms of manifest results. Of actually making, or doing something that matters. This is a very strange observation, because everyone lives in a very material world. A world in which a lot of things people do are continuously being structured by objects. Even big objects like buildings have huge effect on the way people behave. You're certainly more relaxed in your own home than in a police office. Even if you haven't committed any crime. The point is, we are completely surrounded by objects. If being in a police office has such a profound effect. What does a computer or a television do with your brain? This is hardly imaginable.

Of course not everything which affect our minds is material. Yet I'd like to defend the view that apart form our own mental control, our own thinking, everything which has a lasting influence has a certain solidness. Is substance-like. Think of music. This is clearly not a material thing. But for music to entertain it must have a certain level of achievement. In different ways; technically, melodically and perhaps in terms of style (it's not so easy to make exemplary death-metal). This relates back to our own musical development and interests, but theoretically this is not so relevant. The important thing is, music needs to have substance in order to satisfy.

There's another reason for things to have a certain influence on our minds. Everything which matters was built once. Someone needed to work for it. Hard. You may object. A lot of things are produced in factories. These people did their jobs, but you don't know if they worked hard. The point is, I'm talking about influence. Not all things have equal influence. To my opinion most things of high emotional or intellectual influence have an equal amount of work behind them. Also, even producing a small thing like paperclips, requires people to set up complex organizations. A friend of mine once said programming a comprehensive text-editor is like building a skyscraper.

From this point of view, thinking in manifest results is the highest level of functioning humans can achieve. It's getting the mind thinking continuously on the level of substance.