Language ultimately is a tool – an extremely useful, even a wonderful tool, that we use to ‘charm chaos’. By ‘charm chaos’ I mean we use language quite literally without thinking, to control the ultimate chaos behind things. Chaos, in this context, is considered as Babel, complete lack of communication, primal disorder. We charm chaos through this system of language and perception.
Language easily becomes habitual. The words slip into their neural grooves – those wrinkles in the brain – and follow their usual well-worn paths. Still, it is possible to break free from the habitual use of language, to realize and contemplate the fact that any particular language is based on an unspoken consensual agreement and is merely a tool, however extraordinary.
Our view of reality, too, is based on a cultural agreement. In other words, your view of reality may be a product of your culture. We are all acculturated to a lesser or greater degree.
To realize and experience the depth of this acculturation can result in two states of mind, similar on the surface but at opposite extremes.
On the one hand, at the confused extreme, the belief that reality is as you imagine it can be termed psychosis or delusion. The mad live in their own worlds often with their own languages. At the other extreme lies the world of the shaman or the mystic who realizes that we all create our own worlds in any case. Shamans and mystics – sometimes writers and artists can work that edge as well – create alternate worlds and yet usually remain capable of functioning in the world of accepted reality.
In this view, the distinction between fact and fiction, between myth and reality, between story and ordinary life, begins to break down.