Distributed Interiority: Identical Experiences Across Independent Childhoods

in progress Luke Blogg · Independent Researcher 2026

abstract

This paper coins the term "distributed interiority" to describe the phenomenon where children in entirely separate households independently arrive at microscopically identical private experiences — without coordination, shared contact, or conscious awareness of convergence.

the phenomenon

Children growing up in different families, different streets, different years — yet arriving at the same private rituals, the same invented logic, the same interior metaphors. Not because they copied each other. Because something upstream made it almost inevitable.

Distributed interiority is what that convergence is called here. The private that turns out not to be private at all.

two mechanisms

Structurally convergent experience — shared institutional environments (schools, playgrounds, bedtime schedules) producing identical responses across independent children.
Culturally transmitted experience — invisible generational scripts passed through parents, consumer culture, and ambient media that shape inner life before the child can notice.

methodology

Theoretical analysis drawing on Bourdieu's field theory, Halbwachs on collective memory, and Connerton on how societies remember — combined with digital ethnographic evidence gathered from TikTok and Reddit, where adults describe childhood interiorities in enough granular detail to identify patterns of convergence.

status

Currently in progress. The argument is largely formed; the writing is ongoing. This page will be updated when a draft is ready for wider reading.

also accessible at /paper