Perception, Screensavers, Dead-End Streets, and Our biggest obligation as I see it

I know this one person who has as one of their favorite just-kidding-type lines, "All that really matters is what's going on in my head. (chuckle-chuckle)." No chuckle-chuckle, this is what you really think. But how can this be? But I give this person credit, because at least they admit it. I think most people really think like this, sadly. But how can a responsible adult function and accomplish anything of substance if they really perceive things in this manner? But what's particularly vexing to me about this one line is that I have always endorsed the obvious philsophical maxim that perception is reality. Just because it has to be.
Our perceptions are the only vehicle through which information from the outside world can be transported into our consciousness. But just because this is true doesn't mean that all that matters is what transpires once this transaction has occurred. We are all obligated I think, to consider before anything else, the likelihood of our own error. We were given consciousness because it is an extremely powerful tool, perhaps the most powerful tool available to any creature that has ever existed. In religious terms, it's simply the blessing that we were given that makes everything else that we do possible. This is the tool we were given to understand our world, and what do we do with it, but disregard it. We let it sit there on idle, like a computer when nobody's using it, until the screensaver comes on, which is just a prelude to the monitor just turning itself all the way off. Why is this? We perceive things, they come into our minds on this nice, smoothly paved road for us to do anything we want, anything we can with it, and what does it become but a dead-end street? We have to do better than that. We have to be able to understand things from outside of our own skull. If we don't, then it's all just a waste, we're using the gift we've been given to reduce ourselves to that which we were supposed to grow past. Aren't we all obligated to do something? Anything. Just not that. You can't let it go on screensaver and forget where it's all coming from and how it got there. And you can't forget that other people have this same tool, but there might be a little different than yours. This is where I think the majority of human conflict arises, people just trying to impose their own perceptions on other people as if this is how they ought to be. But we can't say that, because you can never see things exactly like another person does. I hate sounding like an after-school special, but some things just have to be understood, and we're still failing to grasp them.