0122 Chapter seven, titled “Building Today’s World”, starts with humans 10,000 years ago.  The current interglacial starts.  Sea-levels rise.

Beliefs and rituals_2c are among the social tools_1b, the traits_2c that train body and mind_2b.  

Here is a picture.

0123 It seems as if these social tools_1b emerge from (and situate) the functionality and plasticity of our enormous brains_1a.

What are humans thinking?

Perhaps, with this topsy-turvy climate, we should be kind to strangers.

Or, maybe we should fight the ones who are not like us to the death.

These thoughts may be conveyed using hand-speech talk.

0124 Unfortunately, the authors’ interludes depict speech-alone talk in action.  Explicit abstractions, such as “marriage” and “wealth” are possible in speech-alone talk.  They are not so easy to articulate in hand-speech talk.  The semiotics of hand talk are grounded in icons and indexes.  What is there to picture or point to?

0126 What is it like when things that can be imaged and indicated ground hand-speech talk words?

It is like a referent demands to be signified by its own word-gesture.  All that is required is the sensible construction of a natural sign-relation.

Plus, referents that obviously demand implicit abstraction may simultaneously demand social construction.  For example, the hand-talk term, FIRE (INSIDE) BULL, makes no sense at all.  A fire inside a bull?  But, when that fire goes out and the bull is dead, then the implicit abstraction is clear.  

Today, I can explicitly articulate the implicit abstraction.

BULL has mind [and] body₂.

FIRE is like spirit₃ and soul₁.

INSIDE is a triadic relation.

0127 Here is a picture.

Such is the nature of implicit abstraction in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.