Contradictions is a fairly simple thing. The first is that different things work for different people. For example, affirmations don't really do much for me, but meditation works really well. I prefer the Deepak Chopra style manifestation and getting myself into a state of peace and acceptance rather than intense desire, etc.
As ALG likes to say, there's a few principles that are in common and you can just pick whichever method works for you. So, go ahead and test the various methods and see what happens. Although, for the beginning I would suggest going with daily meditation, especially in the morning.
The other thing is that if Subjective Reality is indeed the most accurate model for describing the universe, then each of those people are right, simply because they believe they are. The rest of your questions can be interpreted in two ways, either through the SR model or through the regular semi-objective model.
The other thing (that again, ALG likes to say) is that you can have total control over your reality if you have total control over your thoughts. Considering the estimate that human beings have somewhere in the order of 50,000 thoughts a day, its not surprising that you would manifest things in an unexpected way.
How do you know that hypochondriacs don't all die young? If I recall correctly, there have been studies suggesting a link between optimism and happiness and longevity.
About the food and violence bit, how do you know its not happening already? There's a talk in TED by Stephen Pinker who points out that fewer people are dying (as a percentage of population, which is more significant) than ever before. There have been fewer genocides and fewer wars. Hans Rosling also has a talk on TED and he very entertainingly shows that poeple all over the world are living longer, are richer and enjoying higher levels of wealth than ever before. Whether that is related to people's intentions or not is a different matter.
Mother Teresa seems to have understand the rules of IM, if I recall one story accurately. Someone asked her to come march against a war, and she said that she would not, and that she would march for peace, but not against a war.
Good questions, however I'll tell you this: I've ignored all of those sorts of questions and been doing quite decently at IM. Just test it for yourself to convince yourself. The main thing that I hear when you speak is the question of responsibility and consequences, so that might be a topic for you to consider going forward.
I just wrote a blog entry on this sort of topic:
Mind-Manual » Why some things just don’t matter Quote:
Main Points:
* We love to debate minutiae because of two critical cognitive errors: “All or nothing” thinking and improper weighting of factors.
* Think about factors as percentages contributing to an effect. I might go out to buy some ice cream (effect), because its hot out (80%), and because someone else was willing to come with me (the last 20%).
...
I’ve been noticing this sort of thing over at the IM forums at Steve Pavlina.com. People are curious about the various aspects of IM, which I whole-heartedly applaud, however it seems that some people are simple poking around, trying to learn more about exceptions or special cases which don’t really apply to them, instead of testing the thing for themselves and seeing if it works or not.
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So, my recommendation is to put these quesitnos aside for now (you'll prolly find these answers popping up anyhoo), and focus on trying to apply IM for yourself. As I've said before, I haven't found anything in IM that isn't a good idea for reasons other than IM, except for the belief that IM works, which you don't really need, just need an open mind which you seem to have.
Hope that answers some of your questions, good luck finding the answers. I hope that this has been helpful and I haven't been too wrong on any point, I just woke up. Happy manifesting!