The similarities with my post are indeed striking! Your examples are in some ways much better than mine! The way the story about the car builds up for example.

I've had this thought: what if I never came up with my idea, and I read your post now? I think I would like it, as much as the other sections (about identity and black holes), but it wouldn't cause a light bulb moment. I guess it's the same way so many people bred plants and trees and dogs for so many years yet none of them thought up Darwin's theory of natural selection. I would say "interesting thought", and I would relate it to psychology more than philosophy. In other words, I would fail to appreciate it as much as I ought to.

Regarding the difference between what we see and what there is, or your last question, "I don't think we'll ever see things as they really are," my take is as follows: An object is objectively the sum of all its possible uses. Not only the actual uses perceived by organisms that happen to exist, but all the possible uses, meaning by all the organisms that could possibly exist. Their sum is the true objective reality about the object. So you are not just your wife's mate, but also potentially the lion's meal, or a tree's fertilizer. Unfortunately, that's part of the objective description of what you really are. Subjectivity is not bad, unless you insist that one of your possible uses is the whole of your objective description. So if a Nazist or Racist views a Jew or Black person as just one single thing, insisting that he's got the objective description of this person, by "objective" meaning "whole". That's when subjectivity becomes harmful. If subjectivity remains within its proper confines, then it doesn't pose a problem nor lead to relativism.

What you seem to imply when you talk about objective reality, is the lack of a POV. That would be the way a rock views reality (it doesn't affix subjective uses to objects, since it's not conscious). You can imagine it as total darkness, but really it's just nothing. So I don't think that's what we mean by "objective reality".

Another interesting application of this theory, is how I use it to argue for the superiority of humans to other animals, or even humans to other humans! I define the genius (and superiority) as the person who can perceive the most uses in an object. A good way to imagine it would be to think of those IQ tests, that have you think of novel uses for objects. Or the candle problem. These are artificial tests, but in real life you could think of artists who use objects in their paintings in new ways, or interweave them, or turn them upside down turning swans into elephants (Dali), etc. In literature, it's using words in novel ways. In science it's using hydrogen to make weapons of mass destruction. You get the point. If this is correct, then we can argue that a human is superior to a given animal, because that animal perceives an object in a very limited way, whereas a human can use it in a multitude of ways. Thus you can more properly define why our learning to manipulate nature in increasing ways, means we perceive reality more objectively: it's because we tap deeper into the object's universe of uses, as I call it.