The world we each live in is constructed in our brains. The stimuli that we experience through our sense organs get interpreted on the basis of previous experience, cultural conditioning, and the mechanics of differing biology. There is no such thing as a shared real world.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not taking solipsism. There is a real material world out there. When I snagged the truck I was driving on a weigh-bridge on Friday it caused real physical damage. But what the incident meant, my mixed emotions of regret, embarrassment, frustration, these were all mine and were all made up. Someone else’s reality would have been different. In some cases subtlety, in some radically.
It is as well to remember that the people around us are living in their own self constructed dream worlds. Their worlds will seem as real to them as ours does to us. When our worlds collide, and we feel inclined to defend our version of reality, we should bear in mind that it is all made up!
The Obvious? 