[Vision2020] submission response

[Andreas Schou]

> I think this is an example of what I take to be the more radical nature of
> the social views you are espousing in this area.  My argument is not that
> dating "must have" a "pursuer/pursued" construct; I wanted to rather note
> that it has had this construct for the last 3000 years, clear into the 21-st
> century in liberal America.

I have all sorts of disagreements, down the line, with virtually
everything you've said. But I'd like to take particular issue with
this. The past three thousand years haven't been particularly similar
in terms of human courtship behavior. The "past three thousand years"
in Western society have included: polygyny, polyandry, concubinage,
"courtly love," wives-as-chattel, temple prostitution, dating,
pre-marriage cohabitation, monogamy, dating, post-dating, Christian
courtship, et cetera. Residence patterns have changed from patrilocal
to neolocal -- an enormous shift.

The past two hundred years have been extremely turbulent, by
historical standards, and the past three thousand have been a mess of
contradictory standards and principles that, were they contemporaneous
rather than sequential, would never be called the same thing.

-- ACS