» Fri Nov 18, 2011 1:53 pm
If you cannot talk about race & religion within a fantasy context in a mature and reasonable way, please, do not read my post.
But while we're talking about religiously & racially motivated violence (because that is a thing the Altmer are doing, regrettably), I just want to bring up something about the nature of science fiction and fantasy. Religious and racial violence are morally wrong because they're factually wrong. No matter what your religious outlook is, you can agree that god doesn't want you to kill anyone, and we all know that race is just a fallacy. Sometimes, there are real justifications for violence, like, say, preventing the spread of a deadly bioweapon in our atmosphere. Stopping the spread of a religion, or the spread of interracial marriage, on the other hand, doesn't justify anything, because those are just factually stupid goals in our world. Similarly, racism in general is wrong because it's wrong. Whose better at being a systems anolyst? A white guy, a black guy, an Asian guy, a Native American / Inuit guy, or a member of the Pacific Aboriginal Peoples? The answer is: whoever is most qualified based on education and past experience. I gave you no relevant information.
Things are different in fantasy. Who's better at being an archer? Bosmer, Altmer, Orsimer, Khajiit, Dunmer, Argonian, Nord, Imperial, Breton, or Ragada? Bosmer. Who's better at being heavy infantry? Orsimer and Nord (iirc). Whose better at living? Altmer. Altmer can easily live for eight times as long as Orsimer. Orsimer die eight times as much as Altmer. In Tamriel, race isn't a fallacy. On Nirn, race actually exists in a meaningful way that cannot simply be statistically made to disappear by controlling for other factors. Now, this doesn't justify any genocides they may attempt to perpetrate, this isn't Forgotten Realms with all its "Always Chaotic Evil" races, but I think it's an important little bit of context to consider when dealing with all the racism in TES. Why do Altmer feel superior to all the other races? Probably because they are superior to other races in some very significant ways (though of course, in other ways, other races are superior to them. Nobody blows stuff up like a Ragada).
Religion is where you really need to throw away conventional thought, because religion in TES is a proven fact. People have explored "heaven" and battled "hell". They get directly blessed by "gods" and "demons." Religion isn't just used as an excuse to wage war. The Thalmor, Stormcloaks, and many other groups wage war for very real religious reasons. For example: the war over Talos that's going on right now is about the fate of a very powerful being who historically sides with one group of people. It has more in common with attempts to prevent nations from building nuclear weapons than it does with the crusades.
Also, the Thalmor don't want to kill mankind. They want to make being a man impossible. These are very, very different things. One involves taking people's lives away. The other is all about granting the souls of mankind (and elvenkind) immortality and freedom from the mundus. This isn't just some wacko suicide cult thing either. The Thalmor have good reason to believe that it is practical and possible.