... is that 4e lore,
@RoughCoronet0? 'Cause... I do not remember any of that...
Reverie was a form of meditation with mental exercises that elves could choose to do instead of sleeping, and it helped with their memory... but what you've written, there, sounds way more involved than anything I read about it.
I think you're ascribing a lot of human motivation to the long lived races. They don't think like humans.
Elves are very freedom of expression and do what you want on a whim, so long as you aren't hurting anyone(CG). So while they would have traditions and be set in their ways, their ways wouldn't all be as rigid and conservative as you are describing. There might be a few rigid and unbending traditions, like don't mingle with humans, and get the heck off of my forest!, but most would be more progressive.
Dwarves on the other hand would be more conservative and traditional, but with most things being related to a culture that lives underground and mines/crafts for the joy of it.
If you want to see examples of untraditional "elven" races that are set in their conservative/chaotic ways, look at the Melniboneans and Vadhagh races written by Michael Moorcock.
Yeah... uh... I get what the writers -say- Elves are like... but when you compare them to the worlds they're in and the media that is shown about them, they much more often ascribe to the kinds of mindsets I've written about above.
Even in FR they're written as CG or NG their whole societal structure is LG AF, with strong central governments (Monarchies, mostly, but occasionally Religious or Druidic rulership) and almost always a class system which puts specific elves above other elves in a hierarchy of citizenship.
Mostly because it's all based in high fantasy feudalism, but still.
Actually Chaotic (Free spirited, independent) elves? Would probably not have a society in short order... instead, they'd be rugged individualists off on their own living in the wild lands, farming, hunting, fishing, building their homes. Coming together only to mate and raise a child before going off on their own, again. Unattached to people, places, or identities beyond their own weird enjoyments out in the woods. They might swing by a friend's place, now and then, or entertain the occasional visitor... but mostly they'd just be alone.
Oh, sure, they might come to town now and then to take in the local Art Scene and see what's changed in theatre and music every couple decades...
The problem is you’ve used the US as your setting, and thus western mercantilist conservatism is taken as your base line.
Take concepts of ownership - why would someone who is 1000 years old care that they use to own a shirt or a spear or a boat? They’ll see hundreds of them in a lifetime, things will break and be replaced so why not let others share the resources? Why hoard wealth when in the long run its all ephemera?
there is nothing new under the sun so why not just sit and contemplate the beauty of the trees? The only things older than Elves and dragons are the trees, the mountains, and thd rivers. Do we see mountains going to work each day or do rivers fight over imaginary Lines on a map? Why should elves care about politics rather than philosophy and art?
Which is why there's a big bolded section in the middle to separate the example from the actual point.
But since you chose philosophy and art:
Why should elves care about art? Art, by it's very nature, is more ephemeral and fleeting than a spear or a shirt. A spear kept well can last multiple human lifetimes, but within a generation we see art change a dozen times into a dozen new permutations with one of the latest being DEEP FRIED MEMES.
You hung out with Eugene Delacroix and posed for this masterpiece:
And new artists are mass-producing THIS weirdness.
In just a handful of generations art can go from something beautiful and representative to something abstract but full of meaning to something freaking awful on the eyes made up entirely of pop culture references and in-jokes within sub-communities.
Not that that should be significantly different from Eugene's art, which is an image of something that happened in the wider world that you don't actually care about.
Because art is a reflection upon or a rejection of a given society, sentiment, or period of time.
Why would an elf who cares nothing about society care about art?
Similarly: Once you have seen a tree a hundred times what beauty is left to be found in that one tree? Or one mountain? Or one anything. Though we could toss it over to the Elf Lord and the Mayfly.
A philosophy webcomic about the inevitable anguish of living a brief life in an absurd world. Also Jokes
existentialcomics.com
(Love this comic)
I think that unlikely. While elves, personally, live for centuries, socioeconomic systems are not stable over those spans. There will have been rises and falls, booms and busts, a couple times a decade over those years, with large economic displacements several times per century. While they live longer, they have the same limits on their skills and abilities as everyone else - their ability to predict and manage change is, ultimately, no better than anyone else's!
Thus, that long life is unlikely to be one of steady riches and ownership. It is likely made of stories of rags to riches and back to rags several times over. With their longer lives, I'd think elves are more apt to come to understand that control is a temporary state, or an illusion.
That is an interesting way of looking at it... but.
When the US economy collapsed on Black Tuesday, 1929... it wasn't -as- huge as people think of it in retrospect. Oh, it was HUGE. It destabilized the economy for years. But you know who the wealthiest man in the US was from 1920 to 1929? Henry Ford.
You know who the wealthiest man was from 1940 to 1950? Henry Ford.
Another guy, Andrew Mellon, briefly eclipsed Ford's Fortunes in the 1930s by playing off the Great Depression and making himself millions, but Henry Ford didn't go broke or anything. Even as the price of steel (required for car parts) shot through the roof while production was low, he kept it.
Lotsa people who weren't heavily invested in the market but instead owned factories, land, and other forms of real estate still owned it after it was all over. It was the little folks who got mortgages or had their farm financed by the bank who really got the rough end of the economic broom.
People who owned mines? Might've had a couple lean years, but the mine itself, and the resources in it, are what is valued.
Now if it were a -tin- mine at the Bronze Age/Iron Age crossover... well. That'd be pretty different!
Yes. Fully.
Look at art. Movements don’t go away all at once, new ones don’t become dominant in a decade only to meet the same fate 10-40 years later, all of it just builds up and collects. Forever.
What music defined the 2010’s? What decade of fashion is retro chic right now? What is the current “movement”?
But I’ve cream shops are still around, thank goodness. Nothing goes away, it just fades in relevance and prominence.
You're right. I bet I could find someone writing Disco today. Or Motown music. Or Classical.
But in the next few years I won't be able to buy a car with windows that roll down using a crank because there won't be any left. That design is gone, and all the parts to repair it are rusted or discarded. Not unless I can make it myself or hire a machinist to do it as a custom order.
In another couple generations I won't be able to have a Uranium Glass Lamp or Chandelier because time and damage go hand in hand, glass being what it is, and no one making uranium glass anymore.
Remember these bad boys?
I sure don't. But I found one in the basement of an old house I helped clean out. How about this:
?
While some stuff stays or falls out or comes back into fashion, there will always be things lost (Usually for GOOD REASONS) that you'll never get back.