“Well I read in a book that I was there. I can’t actually remember more than a few hundred years back.”
Ashildr from Doctor Who was brilliant.
I’m wondering now, how our little brains would adapt to living like for thousands of years. Would we really start forgetting things that are waaaay back?
I’ve already forgotten most of my childhood and I’m only around 30. So I’d assume, yes.
That’s… that’s not normal.
Thats usually trauma suppressing memories, sorry mate,
Nah, it’s just shitty memory. I have had quite the happy childhood, actually.
I don’t find myself reminiscing a lot and in the rare cases I do, there are quite some gaps. Even in more recent times. If I really try to dig, maybe it comes back, but I assume it’s “use it or lose it”.
Yeah, I have shitty memory too… Sometimes my friends talk about something we did 15-20 years ago and half the time it unlocks a memory, the other half I can’t recall at all
i don’t fucking remember most of yesterday, my brain is just extremely judicious about what it retains and catalogues.
on the other hand i can regale you about physics and how railways work and stuff like that…Yeah, that’s it normal, hence why they remember and you don’t dude… you don’t think that’s not strange? That multiple friends recall events easily and you don’t…?
Different people remember different things? It’s really not that complicated. What one brain decides is worth holding onto might not be worth it to another.
Hell, even what we do remember is half hallucinated to fill in the gaps (probably not the right word for it, but you get the idea)
No, it’s been like that all my life
That still ain’t normal dude. You’re supposed to be able to recall memories from any point of your life…
You actually can’t. Human memory is really quite terrible. Most of your older memories are likely distorted by other people telling you about them, or even just the natural decay that occurs whenever you recall a memory.
That is just factually incorrect And what people lie to themselves to make them feel better. Humans are great at recollection, why would you claim otherwise…?
The age 0-3 is the only time you should have zero recollection, anything else is something you should talk to neurologist or psychologist about, but sure lie to make yourself feel better I guess…?
So, what’s your point? Other people might have a lot more boring childhood anecdotes to tell, but it’s not like I’m suffering in any kind. I still remember people or useful skills - the stuff I do use.
As an added benefit of growing up quite poor, I probably just had less unique experiences I actually could recall. Like, I’ve been on three travel vacations overall. Kinda like those COVID years blurred together for most people.
It wasnt specified what was meant by childhood. The further back you go the less you remember. I remember a lot more about 6-10 grade than 1-6 grade.
You should still be able to recall specific events at all portions of your life, it’s abnormal not to, but you can defend it and ignore potentially life limiting issues if you want.
I think you have a life limiting issue.
Being able to remember everything from your past is extremely rare.
You realize normal is somewhere in the middle…? Between remembering nothing and everything…?
I never said everything, and remembering nothing isn’t normal.
I don’t t entirely know why your getting down voted, because I tend to agree. I entirely remember my childhood. My wife can’t remember ever existing before about 9 years old except in very few extremely specific cases. We don’t think anything terrible happened, but neither of us really know. I kinda think it’s the entire reason she’s avoided therapy, dont want to unlock Pandora’s Box.
You would forget most everything. Even big events would become fuzzy. Do you remember what you had for lunch on this date when you were 5?
It’s Friday. Rectangle pizza
A breadtangle of pizza
Is that just regular pizza with rectangles on it?
This one never had lunch at a public school in the 80s/90s…
Also a common thing at mine, oranges cut to a size where you could put them in your mouth to wear like a boxing mouth guard. Called them orange smiles…
Depending on how old they are and where they grew up, my assumption would be the Pizza Hut Big Foot, a massive rectangular pizza that was roughly 1 foot by 2 feet, cut into squares
They were great, no clue why they stopped making them
Or they’re from Detroit
Fair point, I forgot about Detroit style
“The Man from Earth”
Such a gem of a movie
Yes and no, probably. You will remember important bits and will reconstruct/imagine other things just like you do now. Even with our short lifes not all the things you “remember” actually happened.
This is a really interesting part of the Red Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson
I SEEN IT!!
Perfect casting, too
Small nerd gripe. Maia is the singular form of Maiar. “I am a Maia,” or “I am one of the Maiar” get you there
Maia who?
Maia he
Maia ha ha
something-something Núma Númenor
God, I love this community.
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Oh lawdy-lawd, I never realised Maija Mehiläinen is nationalist propaganda as well.
That’s the Finnish name for it, works a lot better, I think.
Sulevi Riukulehto suggested that the book may have carried a political message. This view depicts the beehive as a well-organised militarist society and Maya as an ideal citizen. Elements of nationalism also appear when Maya gets angry at a grasshopper for failing to distinguish between bees and wasps (whom she calls “a useless gang of bandits” [Räubergeschlecht] that have no “home or faith” [Heimat und Glauben]) and at a insulting fly, whom Maya threatens to teach “respect for bees” and with her stinger. Riukulehto interprets this to mean that respect is based on the threat of violence. Collectivism versus individualism is also a theme. Maya’s independence and departure from the beehive is seen as reproachable, but it is atoned by her warning of the hornets’ attack. This show of loyalty restores her position in the society. In the hornet attack part of the story, the bees’ will to defend the hive and the heroic deaths of bee officers are glorified, often in overtly militarist tones.
This is fun because Maija is a very common name for women in Finland. Not this generation particularly but it’s like the Finnish equivalent of Mary or something to the generation that was born around 30’s-40’s. For some reason it was exploding in popularity from the the 1900’s (as in the oughts, not the century) to 1930 in Finland. And seeing how Tolkien definitely took influence from Finnish, I wonder if there might be an actual connection.
edit I changed the example name from Jennifer to Mary as I realised “Mary Poppins” is translated as “Maija Poppanen” in Finnish
For some reason it was exploding in popularity from the the 1900’s (as in the oughts, not the century) to 1930 in Finland.
It’s because everyone wanted to associate their kids with the English Queen Mary. Idk why. My Italian grandparents named all their kids after English royalty too.
In France I know a Maia, in Sweden a Maja!
Oh I haven’t heard of French Maias, but I did know Sweden has Maja, that’s probably where it came to Finnish from, I’d wager. Yeah, Wikipedia says the Scandic equivalent is Maja, yeah. It’s a deviation on “Mary” as I suspected from Mary Poppins.
Doesn’t matter. While that amazon shitshow tells a different story, Gandalf (as Radagast and Saruman) only arrived in the third age, long after the War of the Last Alliance. Gandalf might be infinitely older than Elrond yet wasn’t there.
I thought the way it was worded, it was still technically the second age?
This does raise the question “Does your age count when you’re in Valinor?”
Because it’s literally the undying lands. Are we really going to pull rank between two functionally ageless beings? Seems petty.
It’s not about rank or age. It’s about who’s been present at the last battle of the War of the Last Alliance. Also, at the time of the depicted scene Elrond never was in Valinor, so at this point in time Gandalf definitely easier Elrond’s senior by orders of magnitude.
The second age ended with the ending of the war of the last alliance, so Gandalf did arrive later, but not “long after”
I assume you forgot a “not” after the “but”. I just looked it up though, Gandalf left Valinor for Middle Earth around 1000 T.A. I don’t know about you, but I’d consider that “long after” the War of the Last Alliance.
Huh I guess you’re right, my bad. 1000 years is definitely long for men, but I’d say midish for elves ¯\(ツ)/¯
I guess it depends. Elrond is around 7.000 years old when having this conversation with Gandalf, so 1.000 years might be like 10 years to a 70-year old. Arwen is less than 3.000 years old, so maybe 1.000 years to her is more like 10 years to someone in their late 20s (and as someone in their early 30s, that’s a damn long time)? To Galadriel or Cirdan on the other hand 1.000 years might just be like ”Damn, I slept in again, what age is it?“
You raise a really good point on what the passage of time must feel like to young elves. I’d like to think that elves younger than 1000 years are treated with lots of eye rolls from their elders for brashness, similar to Treebeard telling Merry and Pippin to not be so hasty
Now imagine 400-500 year old senior Elros eyerolling his twin brother’s juvenile stupidity lol
Hey Gandalf, fuck off. Were you literally there 3,000 years ago? Or are you just going “You’re younger than me, so you know fuckall”?
Fuckin boomer
That’s my take.
Bro I was alive during Rodney King riots.
Doesn’t mean my opinion is more valid than someone actually there.
Gandalf: I was there in spirit!
Am I wrong or do the wizards not remember their lives before they were sent to middle earth?
I don’t think the original books ever told anything about it.
Iirc the books themselves didn’t say, but Tolkien’s letters say something to the effect of the Istari only having vague memories of their time as Maia, with the exception of things that they were explicitly meant to remember, e.g. Olórin’s memories of being sent back after his physical death while fighting Durin’s Bane.
They know that they are, in our parlance, embodied angels or minor gods, but they don’t remember a ton of where they came from
Do the balrogs have the same memory issues?
That’s a very good question, and one that I don’t know the answer to. I would guess no, as the point of the Istari losing their memories was to make them more like the people they were sent to save; it’s not something about being embodied that made them lose their bodyless memories, it was part of their mission. The balrogs had no such mission
it’s not something about being embodied that made them lose their bodyless memories
Isn’t it though? I get that Tolkien may have specified that the Istari not having their memories aided in them being more like the people they were sent to save, but…
Perhaps it is a property of being a body that you can not have the properties that the spirits do. A body is a finite.
IIRC having watched a lot of Nerd of the Rings and whatnot, a lot of the depictions of Balrogs have them as sort of fiery angels instead of the gory beasts we have in the Peter Jackson movies. Now if Balrogs are a sort of angelic but demonic things, then I’d go with your assumption, but if they were the Peter Jackson beast-like, then I think mine could work. In the sense that if being embodied means you just can’t retain all the knowledge you have in the spirit realm and the body affects your spirit as well, then having that sort of raging demonic beasts would make sense as even if they were higher beings while disembodied, while being embodied they’d just feel the rage and fury of the body and wouldn’t recall anything about being a Maia before eventually being disembodied again.
That was probably very incoherent. It was influenced by the thoughts I had when I used to do a lot of nitrous.
I haven’t read anything in the legendarium that supports your theory that the hröa (body in quenya) restricts the fëa (soul).
All beings in Arda initially had hröar, but hröar are susceptible to harm regardless of the status of the fëa within (see Morgoth’s wounds, and Sauron and Saruman’s deaths) that could cause the fëa to become unbodied. In the case of the fëa becoming unbodied, the fëa would have to be powerful enough to exist on its own, create a new body (Sauron after the fall of Númenor), be otherwise tied to the world (Sauron after the war of the last alliance with the one ring), or dissipate into nothing (Sauron after the destruction of the one ring and Saruman after his death by Grima’s)
I wouldn’t say “restricts”, as much as “limits”. I do have a difference in mind for what I mean by that, but I understand just using cursive probably isn’t enough to communicate it.
May I ask what texts are you referring to that actually touch on this? I’m not implying disagreement or that I’ve read them, I definitely haven’t, my depth basically goes to the depth of ‘I read most of Silmarillion as a teenager’. I’m curious because I might be inclined to read them if I see them.
dissipate into nothing (Sauron after the destruction of the one ring
Tell me if I’m wrong, and I probably am, but isn’t this because Sauron poured so much of his essence (fëa I suppose) into the ring that after it was destroyed, he lost so much of his power as to not be able to exist anymore and thus dissipated into nothing? So before he did that, if his body was destroyed, he was able to hang on, but after the Ring was destroyed, he wasn’t powerful enough and thus “truly” died.
But yeah I don’t see anything contradicting my thoughts in that paragraph of yours. I’m just saying that for the while that any Maia inhabits a body, they’re less powerful than they are when disembodied, although I don’t know if then we also have to consider where that power can be applied to, as in the Seen and the Unseen.
The books mention nothing about their memories at all. just them arriving to middle earth and being given names by the elves and other races.
I mean, sure he was alive. But he wasn’t physically there.
Is Middle-earth juxtaposed between Top-earth and Bottom-earth or Right-earth and Left-earth?
Inner earth and outer earth.
No
Front earth and back earth
The serious answer is it’s juxtaposed with East and West. West being the Undying Lands of Valinor, and East being the much less well-explored Land of the Sun.
What’s north and south?
More Middle-earth. South is Harad, and north is Forodwaith. Both of which are regions of Middle-earth.
Beginning-earth and End-earth
Guess where we are
Yes. It’s the inner goo of the earth cube.
Hamburger earth or hotdog earth?
Or? And!
Christian Earth: 6000 years old
Middle Earth: 30,000 years old
Middle Earth wins again
Jesus vs Gandalf power scalers go!!!
Modern depictions of Jesus are correct because after the crucifixion Jesus came back as Jesus the White.
ItsTheSamePicture.jpg
So there were five godlike beings sent to fight Sauron. Only one of them did his job.
I need to reword it.
You are the big cool powerful god. One of your servants, a minor much less powerful god does bad things to the world. So you send five your other servants just as powerful as the bad one to deal with him.
A lot of time passes. Three of those spend their time chilling. One joins the bad one. The last one turns out too weak. Who solves the problem? Four hobbits.
You really should reconsider your politics after that.
Isn’t much of the power of the Maiar in diplomacy and setting events in motion? Gandalf was as much of an interloper and manipulator as he was anything else, and his hiring Bilbo as a thief was the penultimate piece of his mission, as inadvertent as I’m not entirely sure it was. Right? No, really, I’m kinda asking, I don’t know for sure.
As stated in unfinished tales, Gandalf didn’t know that Bilbo would find the ring on the adventure. He originally wanted to help Thorin since having dwarves in the lonely mountain would prevent Sauron from attacking Gondor and Lothlórien from the north. The ring finding it’s way to Gollum and then Bilbo was almost definitely due to slight meddling from Eru (just as Gollum’s death was due to Eru loosening the rocks under his feet) so Gandalf could orchestrate the fellowship’s journey.
To be fair, the istari were diminished Maiar who weren’t allowed to use their full power, and Sauron was a full Maia with no qualms about flexing his true strength.
Had Manwë been given the license to send just Eönwë, then Sauron would’ve been rekt in a year tops
Why were their powers limited?
It’s complicated but basically the gods learned that flexing their full strength caused cataclysmic events. Not ideal. But in doing so they got rid of Sauron’s daddy, so it wasn’t all gloom. But it did mean they weren’t keen on the idea of going rampage mode to deal with a lesser threat.
The lore reason is essentially that defeating Sauron was mankind’s coming-of-age story (the age of elves was ending, and mankind was set to take over control of middle earth), and having a bunch of maiar come in and wreck Sauron wouldn’t teach men to stand up for what’s right. Instead, Eru told Manwë to send the istari to guide men and elves to defeat Sauron on their own
The “real” reason is that it wouldn’t be a very good story if Manwë just sniped Sauron from the hidden West with magic
Wait till you learn about Melkor! He’s a Vala, or one of the Valar, which is a higher order than the Maiar, and was basically super-Sauron from the before times
And he was scared of Ungoliant, and we don’t know what she is, besides nasty, and hungry, and shaped like a huge spider (well, spiders are shaped like her, probably).
(He also got his foot almost cut off by an elf in single combat and walked with a limp ever after — well, at least until he got his hands and feet cut off by the rest of the Valar, I suppose —, but elves were mighty back then.)
I always took it that Morgoth spent too much of himself to create bullshit and that’s why an elf could topple a Vala, otherwise it doesn’t really make sense.
He did indeed spread himself out; Arda was Melkor’s “ring” as much as the one ring was Sauron’s.
That said, even at his weakest, it took all the forces of Valinor, plus the men and remaining elves of Middle Earth to finally defeat and banish him. He’s by far the most powerful of the Valar (and probably the Ainur).
Even if diminished, Fingolfin standing his ground against him for as long as he did and permanently crippling him was still a pretty big deal.
(You also have elves standing their ground in single combat against balrogs, and even defeating them; some elves were pretty damn powerful.)
But in the end, the task was successful, so everyone did what they were supposed to… Right?
Nice try, Saruman.
I think we can all agree that, as a team, collectively, the Istari did a great job!
–Saruman the White
Do we know that the Istari who go east were just chilling? I thought they were trying to rally men in the east to fight Sauron. They might even have fought some of his troops in the far off east during the Battle of the Black Gate? Or were those just fan theories and never actually confirmed?
There’s no exact details given for what the blue wizards (the two in the east) were up to. Tolkien only said they were sewing dissent against Sauron
“Sewing dissent against Sauron”
Maiar is the plural
