I just...I don't understand how you can say that. "Bioessentialism" is the view that biology determines one's personality, psychological, or developmental characteristics. Saying "elves are social conservatives because of their natural lifespan" is far more bioessentialist than "elves are agile and dexterous because of their builds."
The distinction you draw between life expectancy and lifespan is apt, though I'd note that average age at death has increased as well. Some of our thinking about Bronze Age lifespans was skewed by the kinds of people for whom records existed (i.e., elites). Studies of the skeletons of working-class Romans, for example, indicate the average age at death was about 30 years.
In any case, I personally wouldn't connect character race or species to social, political and economic alignment, but maybe that's just me.
Biology doesn't determine one's personality, experiences do. This particular kind of people have a LOT OF TIME to experience lots of things, and in the context of a 300 year old person compared to a modern 20 year old person those experiences are weighted to the past. Their identity is going to be shaped by that exceptionally heavy weight of their personal history.
But the same could be said of a 60 year old person and a 20 year old person. It's just a more extreme version of that phenomenon.
Might explain why I prefer my elves to be weird mysterious people on the decline that are not available as PCs.
But still, not sure that'd necessarily be the case - since mosquitos aren't sapient.
S'truth. But since an entire human life span would last 2 weeks and your longest conversation with them would last maybe 8 seconds with most of your other interactions in that 2 week period being 2 seconds or less...
Not -much- of a sapience...
@Steampunkette Elves are considered adults at 100, but they physically mature at the same rate as humans, meaning that around the age of 20 they're more or less fully matured. I do wonder what that would do to a person. Spending 80 years when you're functionally mature (at least as far as any human or dwarf can tell) but still considered a child by your own culture? That seems like it would be a recipe for frustration.
I would expect that a significant percentage of elven adventurers would be elven "children" who got tired of waiting for their own culture to accept them as the adults they view themselves as.
5e holds to the "Hit 20 and physically be an adult" thing, but previous editions, and various settings, don't. Remember how Tanis grew so much faster than his elven playmates and yet so much slower than his human ones and couldn't have long-term friendships because of it?
That said... you're right. In a modern US setting 20 year old elves would probably act pretty much exactly like all the other 20 year olds around them, since it'd be a generational thing. They'd just also have overbearing parents who are -way- older than everyone else's parents.
Imagine your Mom and Dad met in France after your Dad stormed the beach at Normandy and liberated your Mom's village. And they were both just "Barely 100" at the time.
shudders
I'm only a few years younger and actually have the Gargoyles DvDs (and still buy DvDs in general), and also think DS9 was the best we're going to get.
Buuut.... neither of us are ancient monsters with a long eye into a future hundreds of years to come that we have a direct, physical stake in. And I kind of wonder if a long-lived thing would necessarily have the same mental safeguards we have that tends to bury the negative as we become removed from it because for them, the same process would eventually grind down any lessons they learn in that time.
I feel like the longer lived you are, the better your recall would have to be.
To some degree... but the fact that I recall all the terrible things that happened around me, and to me, in that time doesn't mean I don't look back fondly. That I don't think Saturday morning Cartoons should look like the lineup I enjoyed back then. Y'know?
Media in the 80s and 90s is a touchstone identity point for me, always will be. And even when it was bad or just not as good as I remember, I'll still think back on it fondly, even for all the trouble it caused.
I guess it would work better as an analogy if it was something ephemerally or tangibly "Lost". Something that isn't around anymore, like Ice Cream Shoppes and Sock hops or whatever. Something that existed only in a fairly narrow window of time surrounded by injustice that I still yearned to return to and rejected all things modern for....
I love the Orville, by the way.
... crap have we broken that cycle of society by advancing technology far enough that we can't ever really "Lose" our cultural touchstones since they're always waiting for us somewhere on the internet? That's... that's a deeply disturbing thought...