Solving the "elf superiority problem"

[Max_Killjoy]

Think for a moment about an "average" experience of coming of age in a modern developed nation.

You have been getting an education from the age of 5 to 22, give or take a couple years (and potentially with a gap for military service, in countries like Greece or Israel). Notice, in the middle ages, you probably would have come of age much earlier. Longer lifespans and more complex societies mean longer periods of perceived immaturity, among different human societies. Just imagine how much stronger this pressure would he for an elf. Even if they are biologically mature at 30, if they live to 800, they aren't likely to be considered full adults until decades or centuries beyond that point.

Back to our modern day example. You are likely in some form of debt to pay for this education, so you get a job to pay off this debt. If your country has a civil/military service requirement, you may have paid off some of this debt through service; perhaps this is applicable to Ellen societies. Either way... Sure, you have a college degree, but you have no experience, beyond maybe an internship, so you start off with an entry level position.

There are really two ways up the ladder, whether you stay in the same company or not. Either the economy is growing and creating new jobs at a higher level than yours, or someone above you retires, opening up a position that either you grab, or another higher up does, opening THAT position.

Let us imagine a future that, in some ways, has already begun. Same scenario so far, but the setting has changed. It is now a few hundred years from now, and Earth's population has been at a stable 15 billion for over a century now. While the economy still grows, it mostly does so through increases in automation, and the number of jobs remains constant as well. You come of age after 30 years of schooling and land an entry level job. The problem is, radical life extension technology means that people are living to 300 to 500 years (and by the time someone reaches 300 years old the technology tends to improve further, buying them more time). Sure, every once in a while someone in upper management is killed in a horrible accident that destroys the brain beyond even FutureRepair, but even then there are dozens of applicants with dozens of decades of managerial experience. Besides, no way a two hundred year old is gonna listen to YOU, even if you ARE technically their manager. Come back in a century, scrub.

That's one of the problems I'm trying to work out for the Zath (twilight people), who aren't just long-lived, but outright ageless. Their birth rate, however, makes even typical D&D elves seem kinda fecund.

How could elves possibly have the same psychology as humans? Our mortality is a huge part of what shapes our psychology. If we were effectively immortal, our psychology would undoubtedly be very different.

The one that gets me is the idea that the whole elven lifespan is somehow a directly proportional stretched human lifespan, with several years of pregnancy, 80+ years to reach physical adulthood, etc. Whether you go in for created or evolved elves, it just makes no damn sense what so ever, it would be entirely non-functional and impractical.