Shared reality VS private realities

Something that I've never really understood is post modernism. It's such a slippery, mushy concept to me. One of the things at the core of post modernism, I think, is the concept of relativism rather than absolutism, and that's another concept (relativism) that I've struggled with. But I think I've got it.

I had this sudden realization that my private "reality" is very different than everyone else's private reality: the stuff that's inside your head. What's at the core of this idea is that perception is reality. Our brains assemble all of our perceptions, they combine them with our beliefs/predictions about the world, and out the other end comes this thing called "reality".

And so Bob can say to Joe, "that might be your reality, it might seem true to you, but it's not my reality". And in a sense, he's right. His perceptions are knit together in a very different way than Joe's, and they form a "reality" that is, therefore, different.

Now here's the crux: I don't think that people who hold up this idea of "relative truth" are debating whether absolute truth exists, I think what they're saying, at the core of their argument, is that absolute truth isn't important. They're saying that, ultimately, it's the relative stuff that we experience, that makes up our private realities, and if the sum of our collective private realities make up the whole sum of experienced reality, it is thus what's truly important.

Clear. It's so clear to me now.

So let the debate rage on: Not whether one exists and the other doesn't, but this: Which reality is more important?