Without it there would be no basis for society as we know it. We rely on the fact that our sensory experience is sufficiently similar for our maps to have many features in common. We give words meaning through their anchored associations to objects and experiences throughout our life, and of course we all have different experiences. The fact that people do have different maps and meanings adds richness and variety to life. We will argue far into the night over the meaning of such abstract words as 'honour', 'love' and 'morality'.
Language is a powerful filter on our individual experience.
It is part of the culture we are born into and cannot change. But the two expressions mean the same thing. A phrase on the left can describe persons or events that might very well be described by someone else with the corresponding phrase on the right. Note that it is easy to see the bias in someone else's semantic map, but not so easy to see the bias in one's own. These matters are symbolic but more than linguistic.