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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6526293" data-attributes="member: 4937">First, at least at the cultural level, no they don't - though granted, so many things have changed in the last 150 years that you can't put it all down to increased lifespan.  Secondly, you are misinterpreting the statistics here.  The vast majority of the increase in average life expectancy is down to the reduced incidence of childhood disease.  Even in the middle ages, if you managed to make it to 18, your expected life expectancy was about 47 more years.  Increases in the life expectancy of adults has increased far more slowly because the basic biology hasn't changed all that much.  It's just are palliative care and antibiotics.   And even if we did drastically increase our life, that's not the same as being a species that naturally runs on a slower time. I disagree.  Particularly with elves, though there might be some disagreement over just what makes them different, they are almost always portrayed as being different in some way.   For example elves in a science fiction setting, see the Na'vi from Avatar with there whole 'we are in physical union and communion with the ecology of our world'.  That's a huge difference from being human with equally huge impact in world view.In some cases you may be right.  But dwarves are often portrayed as having less sexual dichotomy than humans and there are also often the suggestion in some cosmologies that there isn't a near 1:1 ratio between the sexes.  Also, almost nobody makes sexuality and romance an important aspect of dwarfish behavior.  Imagine a race without sexual passion, sexual politics, or sexual lust of any sort.  Just how much human behavior would seem utterly incomprehensible to them?Spock is far more bizarre than that.  Despite the superficial similarities in the appearance of Vulcans and Humans, much is made in the original series about how skin deep those similarities really are.  Spock has green copper based blood, two symmetrical hearts, organs with no human correspondence and those with a human correspondence are located in different places in his torso.  Amanda and Sarek were so dissimilar that they couldn't create a child in the normal manner, but had to resort to advanced genetic engineering to create a hybrid of their genes.  TOS makes very clear that Spock is alien.The reboot by contrast makes very clear that Spock - and even Sarek - is basically human.  This is a massive regression in tolerance.Gandalf's human qualities are the result of him taking human form more or less permanently as result of the charge laid on him by Varda.  His natural form doesn't have a body as we'd understand it, and its only when inhabiting a human body that he inevitably began to exhibit human characteristics (as he knew he would, and so feared to take up the charge initially).  However, there is a far more salient connection between humanity and the Maiar - both are direct creations of Illuvatar and as such, presumably could share very much in common.  In Aule's prayer upon creating the dwarves, he cites this as his most salient point in his defense - "We get our natures from out father.  A child can desire to be like his father without mocking him."   The various orders of sentient beings are here all some sort of 'children' of Illuvatar.</blockquote>

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