Excellent post. 
If I recall correctly from earlier posts, you're Asatru, right? (My apologies if that's not the correct word. I know it doesn't have the correct accents, but my keyboard is lacking in that department.) That definitely gives you more perspective than me when it comes to the polytheistic Dalish surrounded by the monotheistic and heavily organized Andrastians.
I think the Dalish have done a good job at fitting their culture to modern times, while throwing off a lot of the old crap, like slavery and over-use of glitter. I just wish they could gather together in a more united sense without the humans ganging up on them, as unrealistic as that idea is, as many reasons as they have to avoid it. It was one of your posts on a similar topic a few months ago that actually made me go from being mildly interested in the Dalish to being fascinated by them.
EDIT: The one thing that bothers me about this thread is that I agree to an extent with everyone. 
Excellent points by the Colonel, Addai, and Faerunner make my poor black-and-white-dichotomy mind spin. 
But Colonel, while I think it's a doomed endeavor to reclaim the culture of Arlathan, I think it's evident that the Dalish wouldn't really want to. The clan in the Exalted Plains seems willing to move forward and try to bury the hatchet with Red Crossing when the truth about the war is revealed.
It's how I think cultures, generally speaking, should roll. Learn from the past, hold it dear, but use it above all as a teacher, not a master. The Dalish shouldn't hate humans for destroying the Dales, they should hate the human governments that are currently running them out into the wilds and not following through with land grants in the Hinterlands. 
Asatru? I think you're confusing me with someone else. ^^; I'm not part of a polytheistic religion (though I do find them fascinating), just Jewish. (Thousands of years of "They tried to wipe us out, we survived. Let's eat!" Ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Perisans, Philistines, Romans, Spanish Inquisition, and Nazis, just to name a few. Didn't work. We're still around. Take that.)
As for the rest, I pretty much agree. I think...
You're making a lot of assumptions based off of something you were evidently offended by, and your offense doesn't really change anything, nor does it change what I said previously enough to restate it.
So... wait, am I to understand that saying your view is "the truth" automatically makes it so? Saying that people from oppressed and waning cultures who re-adopt older traditions and practices back into modern usage to strengthen their sense of cultural identity, loyalty, and independence is "stupid," "deluded," "sentimental," and "concocted BS" just because you say it is? You're somehow more objective and know "the truth" of what they should be doing because "from a historical perspective" (never mind that studying history is itself subjective since history written by the winners, and people's views of the world are colored by their own experiences and biases) you know "the truth"? I see you've proven me to be objectively wrong. 
I would stop looking for sources and define myself what it means to be an elf. That's what they're doing in a way, but they're still anchored to the past, which again I don't blame them for, and I don't think Addai was suggesting they completely abandon it either, but they should realize just exactly what they're doing so they can allow themselves to grow culturally and otherwise.
You know... you said I used "way too much text" earlier, but why didn't you just say this before? I could have agreed to disagree if you just let me know this is what you were getting at.
Retour en haut
