Confusion and the Consistency Model. Explicit and systematic use. Publications, media, communications; magic short-cuts for self-improvement; quality of decisions, social norms and life; new name for highest human capacity; overcoming pathological inertias; integration; hidden body of the iceberg; critical consistency, analysis.

Contemporary confusion leads societies and citizens to a certain perplexity. passivity and even complacency in the face of serious problems and frauds which affect fulfillment and quality of life.

The consistency model, presented in this book, answers this challenge and provides tools for overcoming such confusion. It aims to encourage social scientists, philosophers and the general public to identify and apply the consistency model, in an explicit, conscious, deliberate, systematic manner, up to ultimate implications.

Libraries. Bookstores, the media and all interaction and communication among people, produce confused, repetitive, overlapping, contradictory messages, which need analysis and integration. This book intends to contribute to this purpose.

The book brings together the model of consistency, built with dimensions developed over several decades of intensive work in empirical and theoretical research and experience, making explicit, systematizing and organizing implicit dimensions, relations and systems.

The book does not intend to provide readers with simplistic, easy, ready-made prescriptions or recipes and shortcuts, to magically solve problems and bring easy success, but rather invites them to make the same arduous efforts as the author to arrive at the attitudes, methods, integrations and insights involved in the model, which requires giving oneself completely, humbly and patiently. advancing in endless processes of responsibility,, effort and sacrifice.

All human advances derive from the application of consistency. This book was written in the hope that making explicit how people apply genuine and spurious consistency in their various decisions, behaviors and social norms, will help them enhance the quality of their decisions and social norms (habits), thus contributing to fulfillment and quality of life. In this way every person can and should progressively move the frontiers. reducing the space occupied by inconsistency, evil and lies.

To highlight the importance of consistency, the book proposes this term as a new name for the highest human faculties, since these are the capacities of integrating variety by unity in mind, will, feelings and free behavior, This is what differentiates humans from other beings. Consistency was found as the term to refer more closely to integration of variety by unity- bringing all parts of reality together, and guiding towards fulfillment, goodness and truth, excluding contradiction.

By applying consistency in an explicit and systematic fashion it may be possible to overcome the inertia which allowed societies to live under inconsistent pathologies over centuries or millennia and which led individuals, families and groups to take for granted that no better solutions were possible for them.

Random adhesion to prescriptions of self-improvement, as if they were magic sticks and manipulations, only lead to new contradictions and frustrations, anxiety and emptiness, hanging from nothing. Manipulations of mental power (or, a few decades ago how to make friends) miss the point of what human beings need and deeply long for. This book aims to contribute to self-improvement through consistency. giving oneself with self-mastery, effort and sacrifice.

All individuals search for consistent explanations that overcome contradictions. However, if they stay in partial integrations, taking them as if they were final. they are applying consistency spuriously. e.g. failing to realize that others deserve as much love and respect as themselves, and that they cannot genuinely love themselves without equally loving others.

The consistency model invites us not to cease in the integrative effort before arriving at the ultimate root of unity and the whole system of reality (made by unity), inserting everything in this.

Balanced integration of variety by unity (not money. pleasure. consumerism, etc.) genuinely satisfies human needs; solves human problems; and prevents damages deriving from inertia of unquestioned models and social norms (habits). Integration requires critical consistency analysis detecting, combining and reinforcing consistent components while counteracting inconsistent ones -in others and in themselves- continually improving and readjusting thoughts, desires, feelings and behaviors.

Consistency helps to pay attention to the hidden aspects of the iceberg of reality and its implications, allowing better understanding, predictions and control. Even unveiling a tiny sample of dimensions and relations helps.

The book places emphasis on the following facts:

2. Lack of awareness of crucial facts: consistency, unity

Genuine and spurious consistency; consequences; happiness; social exercise; free conscious contribution; invisible threads; anticipating the future.

People are continually choosing, striving for reality, truth, goodness. fulfillment and happiness, which come together as inseparable.

They can behave in this way thanks to their capacity for consistency, that is, the capacity for integrating variety by unity, which makes possible science, ethics, culture, arts, society, law, politics, economics, institutions and all human advances.

Integrative unity is the only firm reference point, external to variety and reality, and supporting them and itself, as the Archimedean lever. It is the categorical imperative avoiding contradiction in the search for truth and goodness.

Faith in underlying integrative unity motivates people to build knowledge, science, ethics, love and all human advances.

Unity inexorably leads to integration of reality, fulfilling it as a harmonious all-en coin passing system, where each being has its place. The human idea of reality, or existence involves the idea that all beings are part of such an all-encompassing system. Even if people know only a tiny portion of reality, they implicitly know, and can love, serve and enjoy the whole of reality (and all beings within it) by knowing of the system of existence, exempt of contradiction, based in unity.

Reality is different and external to unity, which is its source. Uniformity rigidly attempts to replace unity, suffocating variety. Unity is known through reality, deriving from it. It has no parts to be integrated. but is the source of all integration.

Consistency is subjective -as human capacity- and objective, -as existence or reality truth. goodness and worth, made of the integration of variety by unity-. Consistency is thus the basis for the adjustment between subjective and objective worlds.

The great challenge for human beings is that of genuinely exercising their capacity for consistency. This invoices siding with unity. reality, truth and goochicss-. spurious exercise instead involves siding against them, serving fragments such as ego, caprices, impulses, damsons and material panaceas, such as money, power, pleasure and prestige-, and attempting to replace unity and reality-,- with them: trying to cheat unit-NI, reality and themselves. instead of employing such means to serve human fulfillment.

All individuals are born both with the capacity for consistency and with the capacity for using it against itself (spurious consistency). All human assets (even education. love. religion, etc.) may be genuinely served through consistency, or spoiled and destroyed through spurious consistency.

Spurious consistence invites failure and frustration, while genuine consistency freely and consciously contributes to the inexorable fulfillment of the harmony of reality, thus leading to deep fulfillment and happiness. Reading the lessons (rewards and punishments) of inexorable reality helps people to guide and correct their behavior, presenting failures and frustrations.

Happiness derives from adhering to consistency, giving oneself to unity, reality, truth and goodness, mastering impulses and other influences to this end. It is achieved when not deliberately sought as a separate. egoistic goal.

It derives from realizing the inexorable triumph of unity and reality, to which one first adheres, in the indivisible experience of siding with them with mind, feelings and action. Otherwise come destruction and self-destruction, in the shape of crime, genocide, wars, drugs, mental illness, suicide, emotional insecurity feelings of emptiness and loneliness, etc.

The exercise of consistence not only integrates all dimensions of human behavior (mind, evil, feelings. action). Consistency is also socially exercised, sharing with others, thus building social norms, culture and society, and all human advances.

All beings contribute to fulfillment of reality through blind submission to "survival of the fittest", mechanically compelled by immediate influences. Human beings go beyond. taking into consideration the whole picture of reality, based in unity, and freely and consciously contributing to it.

Then capacity for consistency allows people to unveil invisible threads they take for granted, made up of social habits (norms) built by them, others, and their ancestors. They include real informal norms and structures stronger than formal ones. The ultimate invisible root is in unity, which can be inferred from all that is visible. The 'invisible hand' of the market is only a marginal component of this invisible realm.

3. How consistency is exercised

Innate intuition. Widened sell Loving beings, without neglect and privileges; deserving; integration of millions of conflicting messages; critical consistency analysis; pollution by accumulation of information; meaning and integration; foundations of reality, truth and goodness; mastery, sacrifice, effort, humility, positive approach; returning to consistency

Innate intuition of unity is made explicit by referring to reality as an integrated system in which fragments belong, are compatible, harmonious and not contradictory among themselves. This being the reality of all fragments or beings, all of them deserve balanced respect and love, without privileging or neglecting any. This involves widening the self beyond the prison of ego, self-interest, caprices and impulses. It leads to loving others as oneself. according to this deserving.

Millions of confused and conflicting messages received from others and themselves need to be integrated in an all-encompassing framework, approaching reality. Critical judgment through consistency analysis identifies, combines and reinforces consistent components and counteracts the opposite, applying consistency criterion in an explicit and systematic fashion. It determines to what extent social norms (habits) derive from genuine or spurious consistency. It makes it possible to continually improve (in terms of consistency, contributing to fulfillment) the all-encompassing framework; social norms, decisions and behavioral; quality of life and human fulfillment. Thus helping people find their way in the midst of thick rains of scattered and contradicts messages, with the compass provided by consistency.

Critical consistent judgment thus allows us to know what to read, listen and see, and how to do it and interpret it, beyond fashion and conventions. Anthropocentric relativism refuses support from the firm rock of unity, where people belong. This makes books on shelves and other accumulation of information (from the media, computers. Internet. etc.) become pollution and intoxicating noises, making people prisoners of the immediate. If subject to critical consistent analysis, messages are critically analyzed and acquire meaning and worth by insertion in the framework of reality, humbly recognizing limits.

Progressively bringing together the puzzle of reality to fit the hidden design of integration of reality by unity, statements of reality, truth and goodness are founded. Unity functions as the only foundation, to which even skeptics vainly resort when rejecting contradictions to their statements.

Mastery of fragments (ego, caprices, impulses, fashions, social norms) to serve unity and fulfillment of persons and beings, requires restless effort and sacrifice, beyond the prison of immediate gratifications. Hardships, failures and frustrations serve as warnings and reminders for correcting deviations.

Humility, recognizing one's own limitations and high dignity. a positive approach, trellising in unity, reality and oneself, with positive self-image and self-esteem. beyond psychological barriers and self-fulfilling prophecies; and permanent readiness to return to consistency after deviations, are crucial components of the exercise of genuine consistency.

4. Advancing through genuine consistency

Links of links; validity; dimensions and concrete facts; exceptions; combining opposites; ends and means; quality of decisions, social norms and life; awareness, communication, organization.

Searching for connecting links (dimensions, relations, systems) and links of links (up to the system of systems, which is reality presided by unity) leads to knowledge, science and truth. Tests of validity are tests of consistency; infinite concrete facts which a dimension can hold, and infinite dimensions which characterize a concrete fact, meet in links of consistency. Advances are made only in consistency, using the very anomalies and exceptions to resolve themselves by inserting them in a wider system-, and qualifying conclusions, combining rigor and flexibility, the general and the specific, quantitative and qualitative, simplicity and complexity, and typical configurations, since consistency requires respect for all aspects of reality.

Ultimate ends (spiritual, family, human, interpersonal) need to be served by effective means (economic, political, scientific, technological), overcoming improvisation through adhesion to ends and serving them with professionalism, information, organization, method, discipline, and planning. Quality of decisions and social norms (with the "second nature" of strength of habit), which explains human advances, derives from consistency, and leads to quality of life and human fulfillment.

Genuine consistency leads people to awareness, communication, sound networking and organization for jointly favoring common good and justice and defending themselves against organizations of spurious consistency.

5. How spurious consistency is applied

Usurping the place of unity; absolute power of tyrant fragments; desperate career; means taken as ends; disqualifying and mocking virtue; assuming universal egoism; lofty terms to name the opposite; declaratives; sleeping on laurels; perverse syndromes; complacency and complicity; relativism; pendularism; formalism; simplism ; insecurity relative to final ends and means; self-image and self-esteem; improvisation; tyrannic assets; using consistency against consistency, and institutions against common good; the industries of death.

Often people try to usurp the place of unity, by trying to achieve absolute power over other people or possessions (pleasure, money prestige, etc.). considering them as absolute,, and becoming their prisoners. However, they cannot be satiated with fragments. and fall into desperate careers trying to compensate failure with higher doses or speed (of money, drugs, pleasure, power. violence, etc.).

When means (money, food, sex, power, pleasure, etc.) are taken as ends, quality of life is confused with possession of means. Capitalism, Marxism and other extremists and theories converge in this deviation, denigrating virtue as hypocritical, and considering that every motivation derives from egoism, sex, relations of production, etc..

Lofty terms are used to name the opposite: e.g. use and exploitation of others on behalf of self-gratification is called love: letting their children be cheated, abused and enslaved by peddlers of drugs and other perversions is called freedom. Declarativism -stating principles and not serving them- is practiced everywhere. After emotional adhesion to principles people often tend to steep on their laurels.

Perverse syndromes (Midas, poor-rich man, sorcerous apprentice, etc.). complacency and complicity, lead people to trust in fragments and deviations, replacing genuinely consistent judgments and critical questioning of modern mvths. panaceas, fashions and social norms. Pendularism (shifting from one unrealistic extreme to the other); formalism (privileging bureaucratic procedures and routines, as final ends or faqades to pursue lower interests)-, simplism (neglecting dimensions of reality, e.g. with misplaced permissiveness or strictness); deviate from genuine consistency.

Emotional and spiritual insecurity. including anguish, anxiety, discouragement, negativism, derive from departing from genuine consistency and becoming prisoners of the immediate and contradiction.

Insecurity in ultimate ends, and in economic and social means derives from departure from consistency, especially neglecting ultimate values, and improvisation. Low self-image and self-esteem. stimulated by the attitude of parents, teachers and the media, lead to self-fulfilling prophecy. Assumed assets (money, pleasure, etc.) become tyrants.

Spurious consistency uses consistency against itself, through confusion, disqualifying virtue and punishing sound social seeds. Institutions such as law, government, judges, police,, media, created to serve the common good are used for the opposite. Corruption of the best leads to the worst. Citizens become accomplices when they tolerate lies, fraud and confusion, and especially the industry of death, which corrupts and enslaves the weakest members of society (especially children) through trafficking drug and other kinds of corruption and perversion, and mafias dominating public and private leaders.

6. Future work and publications. Quotations.

This book is intended to be the first of a series on the consistency model. Future ones will contain analysis of various aspects and dimensions of the consistency model, and application of it to various realms of life, including e.g. personal advancement, business, politics, social development and others.

The Fundación para la Calidad de Decisiones y de Vida (Foundation for Quality of Decisions and Life) will also invite scholars and students around the world to present manuscripts with new developments, criticisms and applications of the consistency model in different realms, and will sponsor the publication of those considered as best contributions.

The book departs from the conventional publications which the public is prepared for. It is hoped that it will stimulate responses. criticisms and contributions bringing a debate and further developments in the field.

An immense integrative task remains to be done. Insertion of contributions from all times -a huge wealth of scattered publications. messages. information, dimensions, relations, theories, interpretations in an all-encompassing framework approaching reality, be and comfortable conventions, will be the leading idea of such developments.

The present introductory summary may help communication with the reader.

The book includes quotations from outstanding publications of all times, showing how the book's argument relates to others' contributions. Comments on quotations in end notes are not generally included. The reader will notice that often the quotation departs from the book's position. and often only partially coincides with it.