[In social construction, we expect images, pointings and presences that defy immediate gratification.  They do so by ‘not making sense’, thereby forcing the participants to construct meanings that are not the plain meanings of the words.

By acting as if the new references were Real, our ancestors (and we ourselves today) opened spaces for cognitive and cultural adaptations outside of ‘what we would expect from pursuing immediate gratification’ and ‘what we would expect from sensible construction’.

Our ancestors gained an adaptive advantage from ‘not making sense’. Social construction facilitated exploration of advanced social cooperation. This proved crucial in the milieu of intergroup competition.

We construct ourselves as distinctly human social beings through this second symbolic order.]

Summary of text [comment] page 80

[The second symbolic order, the one that did not make intuitive sense, evolved because the symbolic processing of grammar offered the opportunity.

The symbolic operations of grammar increased the efficacy of word-gestures. Yet, it also allowed nonsensical utterances. These forced the reader (remember that this is hand talk, working with the expectation of reference) to construct ‘a reference based on the nonsensical utterance’.

The secondary symbolic order facilitated the evolution of the mental synthesis that we now regard as ‘the religious mentality’. Here is a mentality that explores advantages outside the frame of sensible construction.

I call this secondary symbolic order ‘social construction’.]