Love as the control of perception

[From Bruce Nevin (980202.1253)]

Love, or more specifically courtship, involves typically two individuals.
Even the Pacific Highway is not an autonomous control system with which the
Corvette driver is dancing, though in the world of her perceptions it may
*feel* that way !-)

Couples dancing might be easier to model, as the structure of musical
rhythm and dancing style is overt. Descriptions of courtship may disclose
structures in the world of social agreements, structures that are I expect
largely less explicit than those of dancing.

Bateson I think somewhere talks about courtship expectations going oft
agley between US GIs and British girls during WW II. The GIs expected a
kiss on their first date; a kiss came much later in British courtship
process, so that for the girls (after resistance the guys felt excessive)
the only next thing to do was to hop into bed; from which the guys
concluded these girls were pretty fast.

The gunnery example (which also put me off, but hey, that's Martin's world)
would have to get involved with the mutuality of evasive action and
pursuit to be anything like comparable, and even then it wouldn't really
come close.

A lot of the charge of courtship arises in the discovery and exploration of
mutuality.

How about sociologists among us who have been modelling social behavior as
multiple individuals' control of their autonomous perceptions--suggestions?

  Bruce Nevin