I don't think this is particularly strange when one thinks about the effect of ideology. It has a way of filtering any common reality different people have. I'm not sure how to move towards a common understanding without a larger sense of shared experience, but even then the same experience can have different interpretations.

That being said, having shared experience can help, at least anecdotally, in being able to come to terms with wildly differing views. One example I have is with my brother. With the same event we had come away with a drastically different understanding. The facts between us all checked out, and we confirmed it many times. Yet the shared vocabulary gave us a way of acknowledging the others disagreement in the shared experience.