Shared reality theory proposes the idea that particular cognitions are founded on and regulated by particular interpersonal relationships, and that particular cognitions in turn regulate interpersonal relationship dynamics. In other words, there is evidence that our associations with others might have a meaningful impact on our internal thought processes and vice-versa. Our social interactions may in fact serve a crucial psychological function by creating a common (or shared) view of reality that lends a sense of objectivity to otherwise transitory and subjective individual experience. One theoretical means through which we establish shared reality is “social tuning,” through which we bring relationship-relevant attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors into harmony with those of others with whom we either wish to be close or must be close. Ideology is particularly implicated in these processes, both due to its salience and because ideologies can function as “prepackaged” sets of beliefs that are useful for establishing where we stand in relation to others and their perspectives. (Social Tuning and Ideology – Part 1)

Well, I think above all things I acknowledge luck. And I mean, if you think of that torrent of sperm out there…

And — and ours was lucky to fall where it did. That’s for starters. You can’t pick your own parents, but you may be lucky enough to have parents that give you the gift of induction and deduction and certain intelligence, certain way you look. I mean, it’s all — So I — I’ve been very lucky. And I — I try to acknowledge that by giving back something to those to whom luck has been brutal.

He seems like he would have been a good person to talk to.

(via The Situationist)

Update: I’m not the only one to be struck by a je ne sais quoi about Newman. Roger Ebert seems equally perplexed and admiring. I want to call him an Existential Man for no particularly good reason (or even a clear understanding of what it means).

By the way, this is my 400^th post. Yay me!

She is a petite, delicate, blue-eyed blonde, while he is a strapping young man with auburn hair and soft brown eyes which never stray for long from her face.

They hold hands, they kiss, they stroke each other’s arms, they listen attentively to each other. They are totally besotted.

What makes this scene so disturbing, however, is the fact that Danielle and Nick are half brother and sister.

Danielle and Nick only met as adults. Danielle says of their first meeting “I was nervous about meeting Nick because although he was my brother, he was also a stranger,… We just clicked straight away. It’s impossible to explain. I just felt drawn to him, as if he was the person I’d been waiting for all my life.” Three weeks later they became lovers.

They might be suffering from genetic sexual attraction:

Genetic sexual attraction is a recognised psychological phenomenon, which sometimes affects siblings or blood relatives separated at birth, who then meet later as adults.

The term is believed to have first been coined in America in the 1980s by a woman called Barbara Gonyo, who wrote about the unexpected lust she felt for the adult son she’d given up for adoption 26 years earlier.…

According to research, first published in the British Medical Journal in 1995, by Dr Maurice Greenberg and Professor Roland Littlewood, 50 per cent of people seeking post-adoption counselling “experienced strong sexual feelings in reunions” with their real family.

This can happen between siblings, mother/son and father/daughter and is believed to be the adult response to the absence of “bonding” in childhood.

The natural repulsion brothers and sisters often feel for each other as children is a safeguard against incest and those who miss out on that bonding, according to psychologists, can develop obsessive feelings for their sibling as an adult.

Those feelings may or may not become sexual, but those that do take that course challenge our notion of incest because there is no coercion or abuse between consenting adults.

Do we treat them as perpetrators of a disgusting crime against nature, or victims of hardwired sexual attractions to inappropriate individuals?