I'm honored to welcome Gwyneth Llewelyn as a contributor to New World Notes. A longtime advocate of political activity in-world, Gwyneth's first NWN story, unsurprisingly, is a profile of a new Resident with a truly unique motive for taking on avatar form: A Nobel-nominated professor emeritus who, debilitated by illness and age, has turned his fascinating theories on peace and democracy into an ongoing lecture series in-world. "Creating Peace", Gwyneth's interview with Rudy Ruml, after the break.
Besides her excellent and widely-cited SL blog, Gwyneth Llewelyn writes for the SL Volunteers wiki, and is the author of its "Beginners Guide to Second Life." She's a member of Chili Carson's SL Chamber of Commerce incubator group, and, of course, a regular participant of Thinkers group, Second Life's longest-running intellectual salon.
Creating Peace
by
Gwyneth Llewelyn
Rudy Ruml is, in his own words, a "charming, chivalrous, astute, and hale fellow well met. Besides, modest and unassuming."
Well, mostly, he is charming. He's also a professor emeritus of political science, currently living in Hawaii, and using SL for a very strange purpose: running seminars on what he calls Democratic Peace Theory.
I met Rudy for this interview at his place in Neufreistadt, Second Life's only self-governed sim with a democratically-elected government. Rudy's seminar room-cum-museum is called "Das Joy Phim Haus", Joy Phim being a character in his series of novels. The museum is interesting in itself— you'll start with a collection of Rudy's own paintings, but suddenly the exhibits change to show pictures of atrocities committed by governments on their own people— what Rudy calls "democide".
An "eternal teenager" of 74 years, Rudy started studying political science because of his interest in war. "I spent almost 3 years in Japan," he tells me. "I was a little boy during the Second World War, and picked up the anti-Japanese propaganda as a result. Japanese were buck-toothed monkeys who would stab you in the back, if they had a chance. They always carried bloody knives, and so on. But, when I was in Japan, I discovered that they Japanese were human just as I was— they cried, they loved dogs and flowers, they fell in love with each other, and I was shocked."
This experience made him enter a state of serious mental conflict. "I had to ask myself, how could we make war on each other? These people are no different that those I knew at home and myself, and yet we killed each other. How could this be?"
It was a stint in the Army that offered him the means to explore this question. "Having been a high school dropout, but being in an engineering battalion with very educated people, I soon recognized that if these people could get a college degree so could I,” he said. He studied physics at Ohio State University, but then moved to Hawaii (where his real life home still is), and after studying Asia for awhile, focused on the political science with an emphasis on war. As a trained researcher with a strong background in mathematics and statistics, his approach was scientific. He started to collect data, got a scholarship, and put a theory together.
"There came a time when my confidence in the results was so great, as to make me think of trying to communicate them beyond my peers, beyond the profession," Rudy says. "I set up a website in 1999, I think, and not only put my professional work on it, but articles I wrote for the site, which explained the results and their meaning for people.
“Now," he notes, "this is disdained in the profession. It is non-research... The academy is a closed culture, and has norms that are very strong. One is [to] just not go public. Not unless one wants to be derided for seeking fame, or being presumptuous of their results."
And what were those results? Nothing less than astonishing: democracy is the best known method to prevent war, famine, and democide— the Democratic Peace Theory. Something that we all have been asking for ages had, after all, such an easy answer! But like the skeptics say, extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof, and thus Rudy, so keen on promoting his results through various medium, including the website, photos, paintings, and science fiction novels, in his "Never Again" series.
"[I]f I can touch a dozen lives with this truth," he muses, "and get them to touch a dozen more... We have it, the end to this killing. And the way of applying this is so clear: Foster democratic freedom."
This is Rudy's lifetime mission. Sadly, however, as he says: "I am limited in what I can do in the real world by my inability to hear well. And secondly, by my spinal arthritis, which means I can't travel. So, this is very limiting. I get invitations to speak here or there, to participate in panels here and there, all expenses paid, but have to say, 'sorry'."
But there seems to be a way out. As he so well puts it: "In Second Life, I can speak to people, people that I could never meet in the real world, and often people like you from other countries... I love the ability here to deal with people's minds. Bodies are a dime a dozen here and meaningless, except perhaps to other owners. It is the mind behind the body that comes out here, and it is the mind I'm after. I want to see it, hear it, and communicate with the best of them. This is not possible for me in the real world. I don't know how many in SL realize how much of an intellectual feast SL can be."
Second Life's citizens who've been to his seminars and meetings often show interest in his ideas, but some skepticism, as well. Rudy might have been a (frequent) Nobel prize nominee, but people ask him if the best way to impose democracy is by using force.
Rudy's answer: "One does not impose democracy, but one frees a people from the slavery imposed on them. I use the example of the American Civil war. The result was not that freedom was imposed on the slaves, but that they were freedom to live their own lives. Now, should one do this by force? No. I oppose the use of force except in defense of democracy. If democracy is threatened and attacked, then force is appropriate, and then one must consider the outcome. And that should be democratization— freeing a people— I say."
Of course, this begs the question: does that principle apply to the US invasion of Iraq?
“Freeing the Iraq people to do as they wish has ended up in their creating the good beginnings of a democracy constitutionally,” he argues, “and through democratic elections (to actually be a democracy by definition, there needs to be another regularly scheduled election-- one vote one time does not a democracy make). But, was the invasion that freed them justified?” He cites Saddam’s support for suicide bombers against Israeli civilians, widespread pre-war intelligence reports of WMD development, and constant flouting of UN cease fire agreements to argue that indeed, they were.
Still, he adds, “I do not favor otherwise freeing a people by force. I believe there are non-violent means to this, such as aid to democratic dissidents, providing them with non-violent methods and techniques, communicating uncensored news to the country, sanctioning a thug regime, etc.”
As a scientific researcher, Rudy explains his methods: "This is not a one-way street. My theories have changed over time, and I have learned much just by simple questions students and others ask. Knowledge is interactive. Also it is iterative... A solution is approached gradually and successively. I seek knowledge in this fashion."
You can find more about Prof. Rummel's work at his SL blog, the websites http://freedomspeace.blogspot.com and http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills. He can also he can be contacted through his email [email protected] . Das Joy Phim Haus can be found in Neufreistadt (<= direct portal) and you can join his Democracy Peace Society or the Democracy Peace Seminar groups to stay in touch with new announcements on meetings and seminars.
You're a smart man Hamlet..
Posted by: Baba | Monday, September 25, 2006 at 02:35 AM
Nice piece, Gwyneth. Glad to see you on NWN.
Posted by: rikomatic | Monday, September 25, 2006 at 05:48 AM
Excellent! It is time that the wonderful - and quite unique - work that Rudy is doing in SecondLife is brought to an even wider audience. Good article.
Posted by: Ashcroft Burnham | Tuesday, September 26, 2006 at 09:43 AM