You're right. It is a lot of assumption, but tight knit families are hard enough when your parents are 30 years older. I can't imagine it'd be easier if they were 200 years older.
People do still write classical music, yup. Also Folk stylings and "Traditional" music based on their culture (which can range across centuries of different styles which is why I put it in scare quotes, 'cause it's all lumped together inaccurately)
Maybe. Maybe.
IF. POPULAR. If not? Tough luck. That's the point. The option is largely gone, even if you can find something for -some- models.
Sure. Call it decades. Call it Centuries. Elf's got time for it to no longer be an option.
Ahhh, but will it fluoresce under a black light?
An elf born in the 60s 300 years from now, as technology and society advance to and beyond the nightmare scenario you're describing would probably be considered conservatives...
Most of our rules and customs -restrain- us from doing impulsive newfangled stuff until it reaches a cultural tipping point that is considered "Socially Acceptable" and then it gets adopted by society once it's been more or less proven not to be destructive to society. Except there will, of course, always be a group of people mired in the past dreaming of halcyon days that may never have been that continues to rail against it for a generation or two.
Can confirm, as my wife bought her brand new Kia with manual windows only 3-4 years ago. Her niece and nephew thought it was a new invention, so you could roll the window up/down without the keys.
personally, I blame the LG social systems on the fact that fantast insists on using monarchy for some reason despite it not allways being the case it is all this fake fudal euro thing they all like which I have never gotten.... 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.
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...
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.
The Elflord and the Mayfly
A philosophy webcomic about the inevitable anguish of living a brief life in an absurd world. Also Jokesexistentialcomics.com
(Love this comic)
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!
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.
you assume that elves have a similar psychological development cycle which could not even be the case they would have to have the mutability stage for most of their life span for them to not just get driven utterly insane and would logically dismiss most things out off simply being able to see a rip off of older things.You're right. It is a lot of assumption, but tight knit families are hard enough when your parents are 30 years older. I can't imagine it'd be easier if they were 200 years older.
That said, sure. Totally plausible. But it probably wouldn't be a Kingdom with a strong class system of land ownership.
People do still write classical music, yup. Also Folk stylings and "Traditional" music based on their culture (which can range across centuries of different styles which is why I put it in scare quotes, 'cause it's all lumped together inaccurately)
Maybe. Maybe.
IF. POPULAR. If not? Tough luck. That's the point. The option is largely gone, even if you can find something for -some- models.
Yeah, you can get it on some models 'cause not all the cranks are gone, but once they are, they are. Same with old style refrigerator units where the Iceman has to pop by with a chunk for you, or Bed-Cabinets they used to use. Things go away and eventually just will not come back. No matter how much someone wants them to.
Sometimes it's because of technological advancement, sometimes it's because society no longer likes the thing, sometimes it's because of economics (Those bed-cabinets are more expensive than a good door lock and as houses got bigger the parents could have their own room with no kids hearing the thumping noises... well usually)
Sure. Call it decades. Call it Centuries. Elf's got time for it to no longer be an option.
Ahhh, but will it fluoresce under a black light?
And the answer is sure, maybe... But that's not really the point, either. The point is that sometimes things are lost to time and circumstance. And sometimes they're gone for good (reason).
An elf born in the 60s 300 years from now, as technology and society advance to and beyond the nightmare scenario you're describing would probably be considered conservatives...
People born in the 60s are in their 60s, now. And most of them are moderates 'cause Gen X was progressive for the 70s and 80s but is moving toward being regressive compared to politics these days. But moderate -today- is gonna be conservative a long time from now. Think of moderate policies in the 60s and compare them to moderate policies today. Extrapolate 300 years.
You know what was pretty progressive in the 60s to the point of being radical? Interracial Marriage. That's not radical, today, that's not even Moderate. That's just absolutely normalized outside of racists.
I -think- what you were actually aiming for was people born in the 40s and 50s and became the hippies of the 60s and 70s. Flower Children and all, right? Yeah... these days we call 'em "Boomers" soooo...
The basic premise isn't "Who you are as a kid or teen is who you are as an adult" so much as "The weight of history rests on our shoulders and the older we are the more removed we are from younger generations and any people who live through fifteen or twenty generations is going to be very out of touch"
Most of our rules and customs -restrain- us from doing impulsive newfangled stuff until it reaches a cultural tipping point that is considered "Socially Acceptable" and then it gets adopted by society once it's been more or less proven not to be destructive to society. Except there will, of course, always be a group of people mired in the past dreaming of halcyon days that may never have been that continues to rail against it for a generation or two.
And while Elven Society would probably be fairly stagnant, only slowly opening up to new stuff... would it be disastrous for those elves? Maybe if they got into a war and staunchly refused to use those "Newfangled Firearms" but I don't think that would be a serious issue in most campaign settings.
'Cause again: This is about D&D characters, not Elves living in modern society which was the framing device and example, not the actual thrust of the argument.
Yeah, honestly, I'm not getting the disconnect in this conversation we're having, Bill, so I'm gonna let it drop before either of us gets aggravated, or more aggravated as the case might be.
Oh, probably.
