D&D General Alien Character Mindsets: Elves should be pretty conservative about almost everything.

Steampunkette

Rules Tinkerer and Freelance Writer
Supporter
I love how out of all of that quote on elves I pulled from D&D, you focused on "Guardians of the world" and ignored everything else. You ignored where it explicitly says that elves are not mired in the past and stagnant, but use what they relive the past to learn for the future. And you ignored where elves don't change the world because the world will change itself, not because they are against change. The conservatism you mention in your OP doesn't exist in D&D elves as a race, though certainly there can be some individuals who are that way.
"Elves aren't mired to the past!"

writes about how Elves are mired to the past like Elrond thinking of all humans as corrupt like Isildur

"Elves aren't stagnant!"

Elven Society is presented as unchanging and ethereal across practically every setting

"Elves use what they take from the past to shape their future!"

Thranduil refuses to help the Dwarves fight Smaug but gets ready to kick 4 other armies butts in order to take their stuff even though the stuff he wants from the dwarves is stuff they made or stole or whatever from other elves showing that they're capable of holding onto it and also just killed a dragon that he wasn't sure his people could defeat

"Elves aren't against change, they just know the world will change itself without their interference!"

Every Half-Elf's parents had a torrid hidden romance 'cause the elders wouldn't approve of them mingling with other races, often characterized as 'lowering' themselves or being 'doomed' by their love in a setting-reinforcing magical manner

The writers -say- they're not these things, but then make them exactly these things. In various stories of the Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk or Dragonlance it is the actions of Humans and Half-Elves and Hobbits and Dwarves that shake things up because the Elves act in a largely stagnant matter citing past battles and situations as the reason for their continued stagnation and refusal to do things that might upset the status quo, even when the status quo is horrible.

"Show, don't tell" is alive and well in media. And it shows us that Elves don't fit the blurbs and excerpts that get assigned to them.
 

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Maxperson

Morkus from Orkus
"Elves aren't mired to the past!"

writes about how Elves are mired to the past like Elrond thinking of all humans as corrupt like Isildur

"Elves aren't stagnant!"

Elven Society is presented as unchanging and ethereal across practically every setting

"Elves use what they take from the past to shape their future!"

Thranduil refuses to help the Dwarves fight Smaug but gets ready to kick 4 other armies butts in order to take their stuff even though the stuff he wants from the dwarves is stuff they made or stole or whatever from other elves showing that they're capable of holding onto it and also just killed a dragon that he wasn't sure his people could defeat

"Elves aren't against change, they just know the world will change itself without their interference!"

Every Half-Elf's parents had a torrid hidden romance 'cause the elders wouldn't approve of them mingling with other races, often characterized as 'lowering' themselves or being 'doomed' by their love in a setting-reinforcing magical manner

The writers -say- they're not these things, but then make them exactly these things. In various stories of the Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk or Dragonlance it is the actions of Humans and Half-Elves and Hobbits and Dwarves that shake things up because the Elves act in a largely stagnant matter citing past battles and situations as the reason for their continued stagnation and refusal to do things that might upset the status quo, even when the status quo is horrible.

"Show, don't tell" is alive and well in media. And it shows us that Elves don't fit the blurbs and excerpts that get assigned to them.
You do realize that I was quoting D&D elves, right? Not Tolkien. Tolkien's elves have no bearing on what I quoted or D&D elves. So once again, in D&D Elves are not mired in the past or conservative the way you described in the OP. A few counter examples don't change that. Given time, you can find errors and contradiction in just about any fiction.
 

jgsugden

Legend
There are a lot of good ideas in this thread that are being buried under “shoulds” that SHOULD be replaced with “cans”.

D&D Elves are not a single thing. They're nothing more than a starting block for DMs to evaluate, interpret and present. There is no ‘right’ answer to what elves should be … and I my setting there isn’t a single answer. Elves that exist in different regions, or different heritages, that faced different circumstances … they’re all different. Assuming elves should end up being a certain way is like assuming all humans should end up the same way in the real world – when we know we’ve developed very different cultures across this globe.

We’re telling stories. Explore your options.
 



Vaalingrade

Legend
Only if you let them. 😉

I have had fun giving them more nuanced then that.
Well yeah. But what is officially done with them remains.

Hell, teiflings are awesome SOLELY on the power of the fanbase aside from the move to a standardized body form and a lack of chance to just stink really bad... which the fandom then customized the crap out of.
 

Tonguez

A suffusion of yellow
Yes. What humans have written about elves.

Because Elves aren't real. Elves don't -actually- have a mindset. They don't have brain chemistry. They don't exist. All we have is the fantasy of what has been written for a given campaign setting.

And based on what we have, which is not "Evidence" but the sum totality of all that exists in relation to elves, they're largely "Human But" because, again, it cannot be stressed any harder, they are inventions of the human mind.

They have kingdoms. With the same positions. With the same ideals of "Royal Bloodlines blessed by the Gods". Divine right to rule and all that. Guardians of the world? Who appointed them to that position? Right. Gods. Of course. Like Arthur was ordained by God to be the keeper and protector of England.

Because we are human. Elves that exist in media, whether comic books, movies, TV shows, Lord of the Rings, whatever else, have the same emotions and ideas and lives that we do, just on a grander time scale. Even when we create mythical magical explanations for how they interact with the world, like being 'One with the Forest' it is always described in human terms and in ways that humans can comprehend because it would be impossible for a human to describe something in terms that are not human and in a way that is incomprehensible to humans because it would be a human saying it.

Now if you wanna -create- an Elven mindset that is more alien, I am 100% down for it. I'm -eager- to see new mindsets that aren't just "Human but"... But.

It won't be an elf. Not in the way they exist in culture or media. It'd be something new you'd slap the name "Elf" on to. And that's not a -bad- thing, just, y'know. Recognize our limits in the face of cultural momentum.
It looks like your wanting to play elfs as Vulcans
 

doctorbadwolf

Heretic of The Seventh Circle
"Elves aren't mired to the past!"

writes about how Elves are mired to the past like Elrond thinking of all humans as corrupt like Isildur

"Elves aren't stagnant!"

Elven Society is presented as unchanging and ethereal across practically every setting

"Elves use what they take from the past to shape their future!"

Thranduil refuses to help the Dwarves fight Smaug but gets ready to kick 4 other armies butts in order to take their stuff even though the stuff he wants from the dwarves is stuff they made or stole or whatever from other elves showing that they're capable of holding onto it and also just killed a dragon that he wasn't sure his people could defeat

"Elves aren't against change, they just know the world will change itself without their interference!"

Every Half-Elf's parents had a torrid hidden romance 'cause the elders wouldn't approve of them mingling with other races, often characterized as 'lowering' themselves or being 'doomed' by their love in a setting-reinforcing magical manner

The writers -say- they're not these things, but then make them exactly these things. In various stories of the Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk or Dragonlance it is the actions of Humans and Half-Elves and Hobbits and Dwarves that shake things up because the Elves act in a largely stagnant matter citing past battles and situations as the reason for their continued stagnation and refusal to do things that might upset the status quo, even when the status quo is horrible.

"Show, don't tell" is alive and well in media. And it shows us that Elves don't fit the blurbs and excerpts that get assigned to them.
An awful lot of Tolkien being used to refute the writing of a property that wasn't written by him.

What Elrond and Thranduil did in the Hobbit and LoTR is irrelevant.
 



overgeeked

B/X Known World
In short: Elves and Dwarves should probably be pretty cringe. Like a grandpa trying to sound cool talking about all the TikTaks and Youtubes while asking you for free IT service on their PC filled with adware.
Sort of. But that's not really how it works. Things don't always progress, sometimes they regress. Change is constant. But change isn't always positive. For example, Weimar Germany was an incredibly progressive place...then the Nazis took over. The anarchists of the Spanish Civil War were quite progressive for their time...then the fascists took over. Looking at American history, you had free love etc in the 1960s...followed by Reagan in the 1980s.

To assume that all elves or all dwarfs should be X or Y is to assume their cultures are monolithic. Which is the central problem for a lot of these conversations. It's like the Star Wars shorthand of ecology and biome. This entire planet is pure desert. This entire planet is pure ocean. This entire planet is pure volcano. It's an absurd shorthand that can make for some dramatic settings, but it's nonetheless absurd. To assume that all elves or all dwarfs should be X or Y is to perform that same kind of absurd reductionism to an entire culture.

That's typically not how cultures work. Small, isolated groups can have monolithic cultures...say a tribe. But unless that tribe avoids contact with other tribes it's going to be affected by that contact and their culture will change, even if slowly. And that doesn't even account for rebellious youth. It's a nearly universal human trait, no reason to assume other races don't have something similar. Incredibly old hippie parents have staunchly conservative kids...and as they all age, the parents become more conservative while the kid relaxes and becomes less conservative over time. Or not. People are too complicated and messy to fit into simplistic boxes like that. So why assume fantasy races are? Makes for rather boring fantasy races, I think.
 

Steampunkette

Rules Tinkerer and Freelance Writer
Supporter
Oh my goodness gracious... Okay. Fine. More elves. D&D specific elves. First ones to come to mind: Dragonlance.

Xenophobic jerkwads who don't help the Heroes of the Lance for crap outside of Lauralanthalasa who got heavily ragged on by her father and brothers for lowering herself by being in love with Tanis Half-Elven. Her father, by the way, being the King. Of a very rigid xenophobic kingdom. Why'd they hate him? Well he was a bastard half-breed, you see, which made him unfit of a Princesses love. Gosh. That sounds CHAOTIC GOOD to me. Sure sounds Flighty and Wild and not at all rigid.

And please remember that she was a QUALINESTI elf, who are a more outgoing variety of Elfkind compared to, say, the Silvanesti who are even more elf-supremacist, thinking themselves not only better than all other humanoids, but all other Elves. Not that that stopped the Qualinesti from also enslaving the Kagonesti just like the Silvanesti did. 'Cause, y'know, nothing says "Chaotic Good" like slavery.

Happy, now?
 

Oh my goodness gracious... Okay. Fine. More elves. D&D specific elves. First ones to come to mind: Dragonlance.

Xenophobic jerkwads who don't help the Heroes of the Lance for crap outside of Lauralanthalasa who got heavily ragged on by her father and brothers for lowering herself by being in love with Tanis Half-Elven. Her father, by the way, being the King. Of a very rigid xenophobic kingdom. Why'd they hate him? Well he was a bastard half-breed, you see, which made him unfit of a Princesses love. Gosh. That sounds CHAOTIC GOOD to me. Sure sounds Flighty and Wild and not at all rigid.

And please remember that she was a QUALINESTI elf, who are a more outgoing variety of Elfkind compared to, say, the Silvanesti who are even more elf-supremacist, thinking themselves not only better than all other humanoids, but all other Elves. Not that that stopped the Qualinesti from also enslaving the Kagonesti just like the Silvanesti did. 'Cause, y'know, nothing says "Chaotic Good" like slavery.

Happy, now?
you act like morals even make sense in dragonlance, good, evil and neutral are just sports teams there and you know it.
 

Steampunkette

Rules Tinkerer and Freelance Writer
Supporter
you act like morals even make sense in dragonlance, good, evil and neutral are just sports teams there and you know it.
And also for D&D in general for decades on end.

Even 3e had the "Positive Energy Plane" the "Negative Energy Plane" and a hardcore structuring of Law and Chaos planes as explicit powers of the cosmos that were largely kept in balance around the Prime Material (Neutral) plane. 'Cause a dozen "Heaven" dimensions and an infinite number of "Hell" dimensions weren't a strong enough Good/Evil dichotomy and you needed an extra one.

Also: The elves of Dragonlance are cast as heroic and good compared to goblins as evil. Shouldn't they be, I dunno, actually "Good" on "Team Good"?
 

And also for D&D in general for decades on end.

Even 3e had the "Positive Energy Plane" the "Negative Energy Plane" and a hardcore structuring of Law and Chaos planes as explicit powers of the cosmos that were largely kept in balance around the Prime Material (Neutral) plane. 'Cause a dozen "Heaven" dimensions and an infinite number of "Hell" dimensions weren't a strong enough Good/Evil dichotomy and you needed an extra one.

Also: The elves of Dragonlance are cast as heroic and good compared to goblins as evil. Shouldn't they be, I dunno, actually "Good" on "Team Good"?
I think something about the writers liked old testament stuff hence why the good gods nuked everything for being too good, I am in agreement with you here we just can't change how badly written past settings were.

the whole balance between good and evil is kinda daft as that is just everlasting war.
but the stupidity of dnd cosmic setting is not really the point.
 

Ea-Nasir has some complaints about his copper business on tablets written in cuneiform that might kind of undermine that idea... It's not the -modern- idea of capitalism, but the exchange of goods and services, the idea of individuals owning means of production, the division of labor largely determined by class, etc are way older than Adam Smith. S'why he wrote about it and codified the idea, but it had already been happening before him.

Debt, too. In which the wealthy lent land, resources, or straight up cash to others and expected prompt repayment with interest. And in the Code of Hammurabi there were lines about how debts were to be repaid and -whether- a debt needed to be repaid if circumstances made it impossible.

It may not have been named "Capitalism", yet... but what's in a name? A rose by any other would smell as sweet.
No. This is absolutely not a "rose by any other name" situation.

I am disappoint [sic], as they say.

This is a particular line of nonsense that I've seen way too many times. It's sophomoric, it's silly, and it's extremely wrong and actively hampers understanding of the past. Worse, it's illustrative of a sadly very common mindset (particularly among younger people, and usually grown out of), where they can't understand stuff without back-projecting stuff from the modern day onto it, even when it's entirely inappropriate.

Money isn't capitalism. Exchanging goods is not "capitalism". Debt isn't capitalism. The division of labour is not "capitalism" (indeed it's pre-civilization!). Owning things is not "capitalism". It's not "proto-capitalism" either. The idea that Ea-Nasir was living in anything resembling a capitalist society is as dumb, or possibly even dumber than the idea that he was living a communist society (where, by the way, you find plenty of similar exchanges). Both of them are awful, wilfully ignorant, silly ideas. Capitalism is a very specific thing, very modern thing. I feel like you know this.

Sorry to be mad (which I am, I admit), but I've seen this way too many times. This isn't the tenth time, this is more like the hundredth, and it's always by blithe, at least somewhat smart people who have just unable or worse unwilling to process what capitalism actually is. It's genuinely harmful to push the line of nonsense you've got here though, because of the active harm to understanding it does. People who are mentally trapped in a box where they can't understand exchanges except in the context of capitalism. I mean, I'm not saying I'm Morpheus here to "red pill" you into actually seeing capitalism for what it is, but hopefully someone will at some point. It has not been a constant. It is a novel and bizarre thing.

All of these ancient societies possess tons of characteristics that put them completely at odds with Adam Smith. He didn't invent capitalism, but he formalized many of the ideas (as did Hume and others), and they were not ideas you found much in earlier societies (hence him needing to write them down), indeed they were typically against the character of such societies. If you squint your eyes and ignore 90% of how a society functioned, you can pretend for a minute, but to be clear, you can also do that with communism, anarchism, socialism, democracy (!!!), and so on. In no case is it actually anything but shenanigans. Talking of squinting your eyes we could look at LGBT rights too, that way - most successful societies had some kind of outlet or safety valve for LGBT people, whether it was just blithely pretending lesbians didn't exist, or reliably sending gay men to become monks, or whatever. Some had bizarre ideas like Rome, which tolerated male homosexuality among non-citizens, and where it was fine for a male Roman citizen to be a top, but an executable offence for them to be a bottom. I wish I was joking. I am not. But that doesn't mean any of those societies believed in LGBT rights at all in the modern sense, just that they found their ways of making things work. Equally those societies didn't believe in any of the fundamental approaches of capitalism, and would have actively stymied many of them. You mention debt, and the way debt was handled in the code of Hammurabi is actively anti-capitalist.

In fact, Hammurabi's code is interesting, and you've forgotten about something rather important. That being that according to the Code of Hammurabi, Babylon was arguably* a CENTRALIZED PLANNED ECONOMY. Prices for many goods, including the most important ones, were set or tightly regulated by the BY THE STATE. Debt had sharp rules around it that conflict hard with capitalism. There are lot of other interesting little rules that are hard-incompatible with capitalism, too - not least that being that if you left your house (and IIRC fields) alone long enough (and it wasn't very long), the state could simply hand them over to someone else. There were huge rules about aqueduct maintenance that are incompatible with any kind of free-market capitalism, too, or even really with mercantilism.

The were major changes in how economies functioned in the 1700s and 1800s, and a large part of them was capitalism essentially allowing fantasy to rule over reality in terms of how economies worked, and for increasingly fantastical and notional things to be assigned monetary values, something which continues to this day (and regularly causes disasters), but which you would just not find in say, Babylon, or Rome, or Tenochtitlan, or really anywhere before that. It's funny that you mention division of labour because you don't note that that's a major anti-capitalist factor as well, because societies often divide labour in ways that conflict extremely hard with the accumulation of wealth by anyone but a hereditary or appointed ruling class. You can see that tension all the way back in Rome, because the most important or honoured positions and the ones which people can corruptly extract the most sestertii from are not, eventually, the same ones. But equally, Rome often shows us that sestertii always don't count for much, because this wasn't a society where wealth could give you that much power without a whole lot of other things aligning.

Sorry this is very long, and I'm making a real internet of myself here, so feel free to ignore it, but I just really want to push back on this ridiculous idea that Ea-Nasir was a "proto-capitalist" or something. He wasn't. He was a dude who sold crap quality copper, razzed someone's servant, and got a strongly-worded letter about it (also probably a serial offender on this front from other tablets found at his place!).

* = I would reject that argument as too extreme, but it's a lot easier to make than an argument that it was a capitalist society in any meaningful way.

Physical money is just a representation of value as a form of abstraction. The actual source of the wealth comes from resource control and control of means of production. So long as the elf owns the mine or the forest or the farmland the money they use to represent the resources that are produced isn't disadvantageous at all.
Nope.

This is some in-the-box thinking of a terrible kind. Money is extremely dangerous if you let it get out of hand. There's a reason a lot of society were quite frown-y faced about it, and had strict laws around it. It's not just this thing everyone agrees is fine, nor is it an abstraction, that's pure capitalist thinking of the most 20th-century kind.

Money in ancient times and the middle ages is generally not representational, it has inherent value. It is not an abstraction. That's an active misunderstanding. I feel like if you studied history or archaeology (which I kind of suspect you might have), you really skipped some important classes here.
But whether that wealth is land, gemstones, coins, paper, or floating numbers the same remains true. And unless the elves are willing to destroy the systems of other races in the worlds (Humans gonna human after all) and have religious pogroms and so forth... not a lot to be done about it.
A) No. It's not the same if wealth is paper or land or coins. Those are three different with very different characteristics, and the paper can lose 99.9% of its value in literally a heartbeat, whereas the other two generally cannot (barring incredible magic).

And yes, I'm proposing elves would absolutely do pogroms and so on. Why wouldn't they? If you live hundreds of years, grinding these threats under your boot is going to make a hell of a lot of sense.
Also in 99% of campaign settings GODS ARE REAL so whether you like their religion or not is kinda irrelevant since they can drop lightning, plagues, or curses on you for getting uppity.
That's why you need to eliminate their worshippers and force them to worship your gods, and also make the priests all be elves. I mean, you're almost there!

That stuff gets lost in the "Minutiae" pile of irrelevancies for someone who has seen -so much- change in regards to all those things.
I think what you're missing here is that you're acting like the Elves are just passive secondary people who sort of chill and let all this happen.

I mean, why would they though? They're people. They're smarter and more experienced than others. They're more familiar with patterns of behaviour than others. They're going to be active participants in society, and they're going to throw the brakes on massively, even work hard to reverse change. We wouldn't get slavery suddenly re-appearing if elves were around - it'd never have gone in the first place, they'd never have let it, unless forced. And if they were forced, they'd still be incredibly bitter and trying to wind back the clock, because the Elven Slave-Empire got over thrown 600 years ago, which is the equivalent of about 50-odd years ago. You think "The South Will Rise Ag'in!" is bad? Try that when loads of people who fought back then are still alive hundreds of years later!

To put it another way, If elves liked vinyl, there'd still be vinyl, because they'd buy it. Even if new tech kept coming out, them wanting the old stuff (and also some humans and others would want it too), would retard the acceptance-rate of that tech, and make it far less profitable to advance tech, because a big chunk of the market won't buy it, and so long as the old stuff remains available, others will prefer it too.
 
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Steampunkette

Rules Tinkerer and Freelance Writer
Supporter
@Ruin Explorer that is an absolutely massive amount of text for me to absorb. And I intend to do so.

However I don't want to discuss it in this thread. Would it be okay if I directly message you about it? Though I warn you, now: It's mostly going to consist of me asking questions and getting educated on something I am clearly woefully ignorant of. But am eager to learn from someone who is as passionate and articulate as I have always known you to be!
 

@Ruin Explorer that is an absolutely massive amount of text for me to absorb. And I intend to do so.

However I don't want to discuss it in this thread. Would it be okay if I directly message you about it? Though I warn you, now: It's mostly going to consist of me asking questions and getting educated on something I am clearly woefully ignorant of. But am eager to learn from someone who is as passionate and articulate as I have always known you to be!
Sure, sorry, I'm being a real internet person I know, it's just a personal bugbear.
 

No. This is absolutely not a "rose by any other name" situation.

I am disappoint [sic], as they say.

This is a particular line of nonsense that I've seen way too many times. It's sophomoric, it's silly, and it's extremely wrong and actively hampers understanding of the past. Worse, it's illustrative of a sadly very common mindset (particularly among younger people, and usually grown out of), where they can't understand stuff without back-projecting stuff from the modern day onto it, even when it's entirely inappropriate.

Money isn't capitalism. Exchanging goods is not "capitalism". Debt isn't capitalism. The division of labour is not "capitalism" (indeed it's pre-civilization!). Owning things is not "capitalism". It's not "proto-capitalism" either. The idea that Ea-Nasir was living in anything resembling a capitalist society is as dumb, or possibly even dumber than the idea that he was living a communist society (where, by the way, you find plenty of similar exchanges). Both of them are awful, wilfully ignorant, silly ideas. Capitalism is a very specific thing, very modern thing. I feel like you know this.

Sorry to be mad (which I am, I admit), but I've seen this way too many times. This isn't the tenth time, this is more like the hundredth, and it's always by blithe, at least somewhat smart people who have just unable or worse unwilling to process what capitalism actually is. It's genuinely harmful to push the line of nonsense you've got here though, because of the active harm to understanding it does. People who are mentally trapped in a box where they can't understand exchanges except in the context of capitalism. I mean, I'm not saying I'm Morpheus here to "red pill" you into actually seeing capitalism for what it is, but hopefully someone will at some point. It has not been a constant. It is a novel and bizarre thing.

All of these ancient societies possess tons of characteristics that put them completely at odds with Adam Smith. He didn't invent capitalism, but he formalized many of the ideas (as did Hume and others), and they were not ideas you found much in earlier societies (hence him needing to write them down), indeed they were typically against the character of such societies. If you squint your eyes and ignore 90% of how a society functioned, you can pretend for a minute, but to be clear, you can also do that with communism, anarchism, socialism, democracy (!!!), and so on. In no case is it actually anything but shenanigans. Talking of squinting your eyes we could look at LGBT rights too, that way - most successful societies had some kind of outlet or safety valve for LGBT people, whether it was just blithely pretending lesbians didn't exist, or reliably sending gay men to become monks, or whatever. Some had bizarre ideas like Rome, which tolerated male homosexuality among non-citizens, and where it was fine for a male Roman citizen to be a top, but an executable offence for them to be a bottom. I wish I was joking. I am not. But that doesn't mean any of those societies believed in LGBT rights at all in the modern sense, just that they found their ways of making things work. Equally those societies didn't believe in any of the fundamental approaches of capitalism, and would have actively stymied many of them. You mention debt, and the way debt was handled in the code of Hammurabi is actively anti-capitalist.

In fact, Hammurabi's code is interesting, and you've forgotten about something rather important. That being that according to the Code of Hammurabi, Babylon was arguably* a CENTRALIZED PLANNED ECONOMY. Prices for many goods, including the most important ones, were set or tightly regulated by the BY THE STATE. Debt had sharp rules around it that conflict hard with capitalism. There are lot of other interesting little rules that are hard-incompatible with capitalism, too - not least that being that if you left your house (and IIRC fields) alone long enough (and it wasn't very long), the state could simply hand them over to someone else. There were huge rules about aqueduct maintenance that are incompatible with any kind of free-market capitalism, too, or even really with mercantilism.

The were major changes in how economies functioned in the 1700s and 1800s, and a large part of them was capitalism essentially allowing fantasy to rule over reality in terms of how economies worked, and for increasingly fantastical and notional things to be assigned monetary values, something which continues to this day (and regularly causes disasters), but which you would just not find in say, Babylon, or Rome, or Tenochtitlan, or really anywhere before that. It's funny that you mention division of labour because you don't note that that's a major anti-capitalist factor as well, because societies often divide labour in ways that conflict extremely hard with the accumulation of wealth by anyone but a hereditary or appointed ruling class. You can see that tension all the way back in Rome, because the most important or honoured positions and the ones which people can corruptly extract the most sestertii from are not, eventually, the same ones. But equally, Rome often shows us that sestertii always don't count for much, because this wasn't a society where wealth could give you that much power without a whole lot of other things aligning.

Sorry this is very long, and I'm making a real internet of myself here, so feel free to ignore it, but I just really want to push back on this ridiculous idea that Ea-Nasir was a "proto-capitalist" or something. He wasn't. He was a dude who sold crap quality copper, razzed someone's servant, and got a strongly-worded letter about it (also probably a serial offender on this front from other tablets found at his place!).

* = I would reject that argument as too extreme, but it's a lot easier to make than an argument that it was a capitalist society in any meaningful way.


Nope.

This is some in-the-box thinking of a terrible kind. Money is extremely dangerous if you let it get out of hand. There's a reason a lot of society were quite frown-y faced about it, and had strict laws around it. It's not just this thing everyone agrees is fine, nor is it an abstraction, that's pure capitalist thinking of the most 20th-century kind.

Money in ancient times and the middle ages is generally not representational, it has inherent value. It is not an abstraction. That's an active misunderstanding. I feel like if you studied history or archaeology (which I kind of suspect you might have), you really skipped some important classes here.

A) No. It's not the same if wealth is paper or land or coins. Those are three different with very different characteristics, and the paper can lose 99.9% of its value in literally a heartbeat, whereas the other two generally cannot (barring incredible magic).

And yes, I'm proposing elves would absolutely do pogroms and so on. Why wouldn't they? If you live hundreds of years, grinding these threats under your boot is going to make a hell of a lot of sense.

That's why you need to eliminate their worshippers and force them to worship your gods, and also make the priests all be elves. I mean, you're almost there!


I think what you're missing here is that you're acting like the Elves are just passive secondary people who sort of chill and let all this happen.

I mean, why would they though? They're people. They're smarter and more experienced than others. They're more familiar with patterns of behaviour than others. They're going to be active participants in society, and they're going to throw the brakes on massively, even work hard to reverse change. We wouldn't get slavery suddenly re-appearing if elves were around - it'd never have gone in the first place, they'd never have let it, unless forced. And if they were forced, they'd still be incredibly bitter and trying to wind back the clock, because the Elven Slave-Empire got over thrown 600 years ago, which is the equivalent of about 50-odd years ago. You think "The South Will Rise Ag'in!" is bad? Try that when loads of people who fought back then are still alive hundreds of years later!

To put it another way, If elves liked vinyl, there'd still be vinyl, because they'd buy it. Even if new tech kept coming out, them wanting the old stuff (and also some humans and others would want it too), would retard the acceptance-rate of that tech, and make it far less profitable to advance tech, because a big chunk of the market won't buy it, and so long as the old stuff remains available, others will prefer it too.
I would argue all money is by nature not inherent wealth as for example gold has no inherent value to people thus it is something humans arbitrarily value without justifcation but it is also not an abstraction I do not know what it is.
 

Yaarel

Mind Mage
I would argue all money is by nature not inherent wealth as for example gold has no inherent value to people thus it is something humans arbitrarily value without justifcation but it is also not an abstraction I do not know what it is.
Some archeologists explain the value of gold as follows.

Gold is an esthetic metal. Its relatively vivid color (dusky orange-yellow) is notable compared to other metals. It resists corrosion. It is relatively easy to refine and shape. Its gold leaf can become extraordinarily thin, covering wide surface areas. Its properties are valuable, and its rarity increases demand. It becomes a symbol of prestige for items and images that convey authority.

But the key to the value of gold is its portability. Its ability to transport sizable wealth in a small amount of space is itself an inherent value.
 

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