You seem to be framing shared reality as implicitly competitive, where individuals must assert or demur on what something is or means. If you fix a component of reality this can be somewhat true, but I think this will tend to make people think of the totality of possible realities under discussion as fixed. As a result, you seem to focus on control over territory on the small island of reality, whereas I would describe it as simultaneously paying attention to the same drop of water coming out of a fire hose. The adopt/push dichotomy also seems a poor match for OP’s experience, such as here:
With practice, we found a way to earnestly share and witness each others’ experience that gave the warm-fuzzies of connection, without feeling forced to shape our experience to match the other.
Relatedly, you seem to be claiming that individuals can only see reality from a single perspective. This doesn’t seem right—people seem to be fully capable of containing conflicting perspectives about a single thing simultaneously (internal family systems is a framework where this is especially obvious).
It looks like you intended for the methods of achieving a shared reality to be exhaustive, but IMO the easiest way to create a shared reality is to genuinely experience the same thing at the same time in the same way as someone else. OP’s description of being in a concert, for example, seems a weird activity to put into “prefer to interact with people who already live in the same reality”. Instead, it seems more about creating contexts in which you and others will experience the same reality.
You seem to be framing shared reality as implicitly competitive, where individuals must assert or demur on what something is or means. If you fix a component of reality this can be somewhat true, but I think this will tend to make people think of the totality of possible realities under discussion as fixed. As a result, you seem to focus on control over territory on the small island of reality, whereas I would describe it as simultaneously paying attention to the same drop of water coming out of a fire hose. The adopt/push dichotomy also seems a poor match for OP’s experience, such as here:
Relatedly, you seem to be claiming that individuals can only see reality from a single perspective. This doesn’t seem right—people seem to be fully capable of containing conflicting perspectives about a single thing simultaneously (internal family systems is a framework where this is especially obvious).
It looks like you intended for the methods of achieving a shared reality to be exhaustive, but IMO the easiest way to create a shared reality is to genuinely experience the same thing at the same time in the same way as someone else. OP’s description of being in a concert, for example, seems a weird activity to put into “prefer to interact with people who already live in the same reality”. Instead, it seems more about creating contexts in which you and others will experience the same reality.
Thanks, I seem to have a blind spot here. About two things:
people can create shared reality collaboratively, without an obvious leader;
the shared reality can be limited to given space and time.
But how do people decide whether to adopt what they perceive to be their companion’s shared reality?
It seems like that’s an obvious entry point for considerations of status.