It occurs to me that I feel like I’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking about Elros’s motivations for why he chose Men but little and less on why Elrond chose Elves. Which is an oversight.
But what metaphysical, philosophical reasons might one have to choose the fate of the Elves? The immortality and god paradise are enticing, sure, but that feels like its far to shallow for Elrond, especially considering he didn’t go to the god paradise until literally the curtain call. I also hesitate to say it was to have the time to help others over many years- which is what he ends up doing- because that’s so dismissive of the Elvish Condition
There has to be something worthwhile, philosophically speaking, to taking on Elvish metaphysical suffering and Elvish metaphysical joy.
I just don’t know what it is and I’ve never bothered to wonder and still’ve got few thoughts on the subject.
Which I think is funny, and far more telling about the Human Condition, because even in fantasy books, we bend over backwards to try and explain why one might want to be Human and never even question why one wouldn’t want to be one.
white americans when you tell them that the idea of climate change as an impending disaster is a reductive first world perspective because it’s a tangible reality for many in the global south already:
the amount of ways we have to qualify the geoncide in gaza in order to get people to care is actually sickening to me. “it’s a feminist issue!” “it’s a disabilities issue!” “it’s an environmental issue!” like i’m sorry but even if this was happening solely to able bodied men and was causing no harm to the environment, it would still be wrong because it’s a genocide and these people are being bombed and killed and starved every fucking day. you shouldn’t need an extra label to give you a reason to care about people that are dying.
funny how celebrities will raise $26M for a fashion institute but can't be bothered to mobilise even a fraction of that energy and money to help the people being tortured and killed in an unapologetic genocide as we speak. love that for society. what a moment for The Culture.
also we fucked up as a society the moment we started telling teens and aspiring artists to conflate being an artist with building a brand as if the two things are inextricable. the name of the game if you want to share your art is to work a job and sell yourself as aesthetizied content. back in my day we could just POST SHIT. to deviantart! what the fuck!
Reminder that the US bombed Iraq a day ago. Reminder that this attack has killed 16 Iraqis, many of whom were civilians. Reminder that Iraq has already suffered enough at the hands of US imperialism, that to this day it’s recovering from the aftermath of being defamed to the world as terrorists, from its cities being destroyed under the guise of “exterminating ISIS” (an echo of Israel decimating Palestine to “exterminate Hamas,” interesting), that the US has so many ulterior motives to continue encroaching upon Iraq that have nothing to do with their seemingly noble rationale, and that it does all this while funding Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians (which are basically doing their dirty work of pushing further in on Arab territory). It’s jarring that this is all happening on a world stage & yet nothing is being done to stop it. Hands off Iraq. Free Palestine. Hands off Iraq. Free Palestine.