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Rick Staggenborg
1.4k Plays1 year ago
Very happy to share a ranging conversation with activist Rick Staggenborg. Recorded at a union hall in Albany, Oregon, host Ken Volante and Rick talk about public banking, health care for all, philosophy, God, veterans, service and hope for the betterment of humans.
Rick is a retired psychiatrist who specialized in PTSD and worked in community psychiatry before finishing his career at the VA, retiring in 2010.
Rick advocates for universal health care as a member of Physicians for a National Health Program and by serving in multiple roles with Health Care for All Oregon and is chair of the Faith Caucus.
Rick is also an Army veteran and is active in the antiwar movement as the President of the Linus Pauling Chapter of Veterans For Peace.
Listen in on this special and exploratory episode!
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
You are listening to something rather than nothing. Creator and host Ken Volante. Editor and producer Peter Bauer.
Meet Rick Stagenborg
00:00:16
Speaker
Hey everybody, this is Ken Vellante with the Something Rather Than Nothing podcast. And I am very excited to have Rick Stagenborg here. Actually, in the union office, visiting. And Rick, welcome on to the Something Rather Than Nothing podcast. Thanks Ken.
00:00:38
Speaker
It's a real pleasure to meet you. Everybody, I ran into Rick during a picket, a labor picket. So I know Rick's there for the people. And I've talked to Rick over time about a lot of the really incredible work he's done over the years for peace and politics that I would say are deep concern for the people, deep concern for
Rick's Background and Activism Motivation
00:01:09
Speaker
the government in the public sector serving people compared to where we are right now. You've had some time heading up Soldiers for Peace International and a lot of work. Can you tell the listeners a bit about
00:01:30
Speaker
your experiences and what's led you to be an advocate for running for office, for being active on issues of public health and public banking. So you could just give a little bit of background of what sparked your deep energy towards that. Absolutely. Yeah. First of all, I need to correct the misconception that I've accomplished a lot of things. I actually didn't get involved in activism in earnest until about 2010.
00:02:00
Speaker
And before that, I was a practicing psychiatrist. I worked for the VA and in community mental health. I was in the military. I was trained initially in the Army at Trippler Medical Center in Hawaii. Or as I like to say, I was defending the Western perimeter in my time in the service. So anyway, I guess it really goes all the way back to childhood that was brought up in the Catholic Church.
00:02:32
Speaker
I found what the priests had to say about how we were supposed to treat each other compelling. So even though I stopped going to church when I was 10 years old because I couldn't stand the dogma, when I finally found out that there was dogma too, that stuck with me. It's just kind of the way my dad lived his life and it's the kind of way that I try to live my life.
00:02:55
Speaker
And so it just comes naturally for me to care about other people. When I chose my profession, it was not based on the fact that doctors make good money. It was based on the fact that I wanted to serve people, particularly underserved populations, because I have a real appreciation for what people go through. And I've always thought that everybody deserves access to the health care when they need it.
00:03:23
Speaker
And people without any means are the ones that suffer the most from this economic system. So it's just a natural thing that I went into community psychiatry, serving the underserved. And then in the VA also, one of the main qualifications is income.
00:03:42
Speaker
income or service-connected disability are the two main ways to get VA services. I felt like I was serving the underserved there too. Anyway, that's just the way it is. Around 2010, I really woke up to what was going on.
Insights on Healthcare and Single-Payer System
00:03:58
Speaker
Until then, I just figured I was good enough if I was serving people one-on-one or in group therapy, changing their lives that way.
00:04:09
Speaker
And I always, when I was young, I actually had an ambition to be a politician, but the more I learned about politics, the more disgusted I got. But somehow I held onto that naive conception that Democrats were on our side and the Republicans were not so much. They were favoring the corporations. So I just tootled along focusing on my studies and my work. And about 2009, I guess it was really when President Obama said that we were going to reform healthcare,
00:04:39
Speaker
I started digging into what the story was about the healthcare system, and healthcare systems in other countries, and through Physicians for a National Health program, found out that it's a no-brainer. Single payer is the only way to go. Single payer universal healthcare, no insurance companies, is by far the preferred way to go.
00:05:02
Speaker
And then when I saw the political process, it was pretty clear right from the beginning that they weren't—well, Obama said he wasn't going to consider it. He said, if we were really designing the system from scratch, we'd do that, but we can't do that. And I asked myself, well, why can't we do that?
00:05:18
Speaker
Well, it's because not just President Obama, but all politicians depend on money from corporations and rich folks who profit from healthcare. They profit from war. They profit from all the things that I'm against. And I really kind of, I felt a little panicky at first when I realized that. I think it's fair to say I went a little manic. So yeah, I got frantically involved in a lot of different things.
00:05:49
Speaker
I really thought about what it would take to change the system, and I decided that actually about six months before Citizens United was decided when they said they were going to consider the case, I decided, well, there we go. If we want to get rid of the crooked politicians, we need to change the way their campaigns are financed first.
00:06:13
Speaker
I realized that part of the reason they could do that was because of corporate personhood that had to do with the series of decisions that led to Citizens United.
Citizens United and Senate Run
00:06:24
Speaker
And so I just said, well, okay, I'll work on that. I'll work on a constitutional amendment.
00:06:31
Speaker
And that was actually before I found out about move to amend. They were really getting organized about the same time. We both saw what was coming, that this would be an opportunity to educate the public. And damn it, they were going to get it now. It's going to be so obvious. Well, that's when I decided to run for the Senate.
00:06:50
Speaker
I said, ultimately, the only way this is going to happen is if we make it a campaign issue, a litmus test for people running for federal office and just telling me, you know, if you're not going to, if that's the bottom line, if you're not going to do that, I don't care what else you say you're going to do because you're not going to get anything accomplished. So, anyway, it was a third party ticket. Didn't get a lot of attention. I didn't realize at the time third parties really didn't have much support for candidates. So, anyway.
00:07:21
Speaker
It was a learning experience and one of the things I learned was that people don't seem to be able to prioritize. They don't seem to get the fact that some problems are at the root and other things are just to branch off from that. I really wanted to strike at the root and it was kind of frustrating.
00:07:41
Speaker
I worked out for several years trying to popularize this idea. Meanwhile, all the momentum that moved to amended built up, not all of it, but a lot of it dissipated. Some of the groups I was working with, they just didn't meet anymore. They just was like, well, we already got signatures. We tried to get resolutions passed, but they didn't get that. It's a multi-year process and it should have had a clear goal from the beginning.
00:08:09
Speaker
And that goal was to make an account paid limits test and move to amend eventually did start doing that around 2014. I think it was anyway. It's not too late. I encourage people to get involved with that. That's one of the keys. There are a lot of other things that need to be done to reform.
00:08:29
Speaker
government and make our so-called representatives represent us instead of big money. Anyway, that's how I got involved in activism. Like I said, I think everything stems from that. I cared about war, but I always thought it was so crazy.
00:08:47
Speaker
that I didn't really study it. You know, that song, how does it go? Study war no more? We're going to study war no more? Yeah. Well, I never studied it. I thought it's crazy. You know, we stopped the Vietnam War. Surely Americans have learned their lesson. That's how naive I was. I joined the military myself, thinking, oh, that guy sent me any place crazy. I was wrong. But fortunately, I got out of the military before we got into the Persian Gulf War. So I was spared that as a VA psychiatrist.
00:09:21
Speaker
I don't know why this gets me. I used to be able to talk to veterans about their stories without choking up. You can't do that in therapy, but I guess I've gotten soft. Let's just say I heard a lot of horrible stories.
00:09:39
Speaker
Well, you know, I wanted to say on just a couple points as far as the background you mentioned early on, you know, the Catholic Church, I grew up in Rhode Island and not a very religious family at all, but Catholicism within Rhode Island is very predominant. There's a lot of immigrant groups. They're historically Catholic, the Portuguese or they're Canadian, French, Italians, all tend to be
00:10:09
Speaker
a Catholic immigrant, so it's a very big part of it. For me, I ended up encountering maybe a more sophisticated way of looking at the church when I studied at Marquette University, which is a Jesuit institution in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I still do it. I was reading Papal Encyclicals, which are written every few years by
00:10:36
Speaker
the pope, and they're about issues. I'm a philosopher, so I'm like, what is the church saying? What are the words on the issues that are so pressing on this point? The environment, labor, things like that.
00:10:52
Speaker
So it's like a philosophical interest. And Pope John Paul II was actually a trained philosopher. He studied French phenomenology. He was very well trained in modern philosophy. But I'm pointing to afterwards Pope Benedict view to be a conservative
00:11:14
Speaker
papal administrator and read his encyclicals afterwards. And I've told people this, people don't go looking for encyclicals, but what has to be said about labor, the dignity of labor, what has to be said about care of the planet and the environment is expounded there as official church
00:11:44
Speaker
doctrine, which I take legitimately, now I'm not a practicing Catholic, but I'm very interested into the intellectual engagement. And some of the, I'm assuming a bit, some of the principles that you said you got out of the Catholic Church of maybe example of Jesus, of compassion, of caring for others, of kind of like a moral change of how to interact with folks. And those are the parts I was sensitive to as well. As a matter of fact, you know, my labor work sometimes like in my head, I feel
00:12:13
Speaker
I studied Catholic labor and just that kind of idea of the people, of the meek, of the powerless. So I really picked up on what you were saying there. Another part too with regards to my deep appreciation for your work with veterans at the VA. I'm not particularly familiar, you're telling about some of it.
00:12:42
Speaker
I was also taught very young from my dad who almost was called to Vietnam with two young kids. And my dad, he didn't have to go. The war had ended. He wasn't called.
00:13:00
Speaker
Um, but my dad is very young age told me a way to interact with veterans with, with thanks out of the politics and everything, but out of the things that citizens can be called, you can be called and you may have to serve. And that might've been part of his duty. So no matter what the experience was of those folks.
00:13:23
Speaker
I learned I learned a sensitivity and in a connection to that to that sacrifice and So it's for that reasons personally. I really appreciate the work that you've done and what you had to say. Um About the big issues I enjoy how you're talking about the big issues and you say it's a naivete and and I know there's a little bit that you have to have a certain type of naivete to to to think about
00:13:52
Speaker
to think about the reformatting of government or public health and public. You have to still pretend or still act naive to even start. So I think that's a good instinct. I wanted to chat with you about some recent work we've talked about and what you're doing regarding public banking and
Public Banking for Citizens
00:14:20
Speaker
I wanted you to describe the general need or what you see as the need for public banking and what it is that you're working on, what it can provide for a regular US citizen. Yeah. Well, public banking does serve a definite need, but really the main reason I got involved was because I realized that the big banks, Wall Street in general, Wall Street investors, as well as bankers,
00:14:50
Speaker
and the ones that are both. They're the ones that are driving just about everything that's wrong. I mean, they are the ones that exploit fossil fuel resources and promote their use and promote wars in order to control them. They are the ones who are privatizing Medicare and the VA to suck more profit out of it at the cost of efficiency, at the cost of
00:15:18
Speaker
ungodly amounts of taxpayer money, and they're getting away with it because they also control the media. And the media, of course, controls the discourse on these things for most people. People who follow the mainstream media are just
00:15:35
Speaker
They have this vision that things are either this way or that way. And then the real thing, once I found to themselves really sophisticated, we'll say, well, I know it's somewhere in between, but of course it's not anywhere in between because it's the corporate powers that own these things that are telling you it's this or that. And, you know, the Republicans and the Democrats are both batting for the same team. They just take turns.
00:16:05
Speaker
And, uh, well, that was the inside of hat in 2010. That's why I ran for a third party ticket. And I sort of, I knew that these deliberations, for instance, on, on healthcare were not going to go anywhere. So, uh, yeah, I was, I got past my naivete really quick, but public banking is a totally different thing. Public banking is very realistic. We have a public bank in North Dakota.
00:16:31
Speaker
And the thing about public banks, I guess I should start by defining them. The state charters a bank that could be financed in a number of different ways. And its mission is to serve the community, serve the citizens. So that means it's totally different. It's not sucking out profits to give to Wall Street investors. That was what drew me to it. It's a way to fight the big banks. It's a way to fight against war.
00:17:02
Speaker
And it's a way to fight for real health care reform. So it's everything that I want. And it's more realistic than trying to pass a constitutional amendment. Not that that is not a valid rule. If we ever wake people up enough, they'll get behind that and we can do it. So that's not naive. I was just a little naive about how hard it would be.
00:17:25
Speaker
Yeah, and I've lived in the Midwest for a bit, spent time in Wisconsin and Minnesota. And one of the previous times we had talked about this, I'd mentioned some of the politics that arise of more of a collectivist. I'm thinking of the politics or the farmers collecting resources, whether it be the crops or dealing with the market.
00:17:55
Speaker
How do we finance each other? How do we help each other? That type of community bank. So there's, I think there's spots where there's these deep roots of understanding like we are this, we are farmers, we need to take care of ourselves. The person in Washington doesn't understand this. The person from few counties over doesn't understand this. We understand this. And I've always seen that the politics for me and being around there tend to be
00:18:21
Speaker
seemingly more collectivist based or move, like you think of the historical progressive movement, which was both Republican and Democrats. It's the 1930s, 40s, kind of the reformist about things.
00:18:40
Speaker
So and of course, you mentioned the bank in North Dakota, there's some histories like many type of things with a new idea or an idea that sticks out there. There's traditions behind this. And I thought one of the interesting things you had to say, which really hit for me just now was the role in finance banks tied to tie to war, tied to resources, tied to in you need money for that to be
00:19:08
Speaker
to happen and so it's like a larger connections of what banks do or the power that they hold. So you're working on this issue and you talk to folks about it. What are you finding out about what people think about the idea?
00:19:31
Speaker
and kind of their openness or willingness to think about it and see how it might benefit them. Any anecdotes or things you've gleaned from doing that? I guess the one thing that I've learned from doing this kind of work is that there aren't any good arguments against it, apparently. At least nobody that I've met has thought of any arguments against it. I mean, you have to work out the nuts and bolts, but it's definitely doable because it's been done and it's working very well.
00:19:59
Speaker
and the whole idea of a bank that serves the people, I mean, we would put our state funds in there instead of sending it to Wall Street banks. That's how it affects them. They're not going to get our money. And if we did this all over the country, that's a big chunk of money. And in the process, we educate people that Wall Street is the root of the problem.
00:20:25
Speaker
That was the case during the Occupy movement, and a lot of people said that was a problem, but it wasn't just a problem, it was really the root. That's what's the name of that magazine, Adbusters? In that article that kind of sparked this whole thing, that's exactly what they said. In fact, they said it was a constitutional, we need a constitutional amendment, and we need to rein in the banks.
00:20:51
Speaker
That would be the main goal. That's the first thing that politicians have to do if we get an honest Congress. To me, that was a no-brainer. These are the two things I was already thinking about, and they brought it together. I got so excited about that movement, but it was dogmatism. It was a Catholic Church all over, except non-hierarchical. But other than that, I mean,
00:21:18
Speaker
philosophy was dogmatic. Thou shalt not have any organizations lend their support to this movement. Thou shalt have no priorities. I'm like, are you kidding me? Go back and read that article. You've got to prioritize if you want to accomplish anything.
00:21:37
Speaker
So anyway, it faded as I expected, but it did a lot of good things. It raised a lot of awareness.
Corporate Influence on Politics
00:21:46
Speaker
And again, even though they didn't say the banks were the main problem, that corruption of government, they kind of implied it a lot. And it really amazed me how quickly people forgot that. It's sort of like Citizens United. People always mention it when they're on the topic of corruption, but then they
00:22:06
Speaker
go on to something. They don't get that that is the problem. Give me any problem and I will relate well just about any problem that's national or international and I will relate it to corruption in our government because our government really is the figurehead for a transnational
00:22:30
Speaker
I want to avoid terms that people think are conspiratorial, but there are certain individuals who are so freaking rich, like the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds, and people always mention those. They're not sitting around in a little group making plans and then giving orders, and everybody follows them all the way down the chain. That's not how it works. You have to develop a level of sophistication that will enable you to see
00:22:58
Speaker
just how this works if you want to fight it. There's no other way. You can fight little battles and skirmishes, but you're not going to have a war plan unless you understand who you're against. And it is a relatively small group of people who control a relatively small number of corporations that own other corporations.
00:23:20
Speaker
And most of those, or at least the top 100 or so, are almost all financial institutions. So when I say it's the bankers on Wall Street, I mean it. And it's not just the United States. They're in league with similar folks in Europe, primarily, and Japan, and a few in Japan, a few other places. But that's really what we're fighting.
00:23:43
Speaker
Yeah, I, since we're talking, since we're talking politics, I've, I've, I've noticed or just just seen a development, you know, over time, probably citizen United post citizen United pandemic and such consolidation of media, social media, where
00:24:03
Speaker
you know, part of like doing a podcast or having discussions like this is to be outside of the American discourse, which I see a ritualistic pattern, right? So if I'm a Republican, I get my briefings on the bat shit, crazy stuff of the day, have my counter arguments. And it's a, it's an echo chamber that's been studied, right? The faxes used to go out from Rush Limbaugh. I mean, it was the echo chamber for the day.
00:24:32
Speaker
And then on the Democrats engaged in this either or type of dichotomy. And I actually read the newer language of Democrats, which is actually kind of Trumpy.
00:24:50
Speaker
and trying to jolt into the populism of the people and express righteous outrage, I think, which many of the issues are legitimate within the Democratic Party. But we seem bound here into this echo chamber and these options of either or. And for me, how I've developed in my political beliefs, Democrat and equally useless, they don't even
00:25:21
Speaker
touch my view of the world. Rick, how do we disrupt whether it's consolidation or just this either or in American politics?
Beyond the Political Dichotomy
00:25:38
Speaker
How do you disrupt that? Well, you have to attack on multiple fronts and you have to have a plan. You have to have priorities. You have to have objectives.
00:25:49
Speaker
and you have to be realistic and yet not let that affect your willingness to fight the fight. Because even though the odds are very, very long, in fact, some people would say insurmountable, especially with global climate change over our heads, it's still possible. I don't know, maybe that goes back to my roots in the Catholic Church. It's not like I believe God can intervene, but it's like if there is a God,
00:26:17
Speaker
And if God created this world, is it just like a balloon that he pops at the end or wants to see popping? I think that if there is a God, God knew the beginning and everything afterward before he thought it into existence. It could consider all the possibilities. And this one came into existence. And maybe an infinite number of other ideas of God's popped into existence, too.
00:26:46
Speaker
Either way, if you can picture a way that if God can do that, and if you think about the stories, I'm only familiar really with the Christian stories of God, but
00:27:03
Speaker
You know, God created everything from, not from nothing, from God, because God was all there was, right? He didn't create it from nothing. He created it from God. So, you know, since everything that exists in the physical world is part of God. And I have this fantasy that could be true, I don't know, that our consciousness and the consciousness of the animals and the trees that are screaming because we're killing them all are one.
00:27:34
Speaker
And, or maybe there's just one consciousness and it filters through us. And this is how God views its creation, you know, if, if, if, if, if, I don't know. But in the end, you make a choice, whether you believe in God or not. You can just say, I don't need it, but you know what? I think we do. But I have this, I have this idea that maybe, just maybe, if we all come to, somehow enough of us come to a common understanding,
00:28:04
Speaker
that we can maybe will things to happen. Because honestly, you know, when you look at it from a physical point of view, what's in store for us with global climate change, it seems like a foregone conclusion what's going to happen. And that is either extinction or at least collapse of human civilization. So I would prefer to believe there's a possible way out and that would be a really mass change in consciousness. And even if we can't do it like magically,
00:28:34
Speaker
I don't think it's magical. I think there are physical things we don't understand yet. Even if we can't do it that way, maybe, you know, if there's a way we can do it through the conventional means, that's the only way it's going to happen. So that kind of helps me think about it. And I like playing with the ideas anyway, but yeah, I think we can do it, but it's going to take a mass change of consciousness and then whatever happens, happens. Yeah. Hey.
00:29:04
Speaker
Everybody Rick Stagenborg answering to something rather than nothing question without even me prompting it. What a great what a great guest I I want to mention a couple things I think about what you're talking about a bit and you know, I find on just very generally speaking in order to frame it the idea of God I move much more towards what you had commented upon kind of like I
00:29:32
Speaker
the permutation or the presence of whether it's God or whatever that is throughout all. And some philosophers have argued that throughout history. An example of one maybe not well known was Spinoza, who wrote in such a way about the presence of God in all things
00:29:56
Speaker
that he's historically always been accused of being atheist or Buddhist in his thinking in a certain way. So that's maybe one way of thinking about it, is the permutation. And I think, for me, that's the territory that is the only territory where I can breathe and make sense of things.
00:30:19
Speaker
The other pieces are counterintuitive, a gendered presence, a separate realm, all those types of things. They don't start for me. And I understand faith and I've studied religion. I've done all these things. And at a certain point, you have to feel that that is to be true or not in order to comport yourself with it, which I don't. So I've always been, I guess, on what you were talking about, much more towards the presence of what we would deem to be God in
00:30:49
Speaker
in the consciousness, in the world. And I think it's a really interesting way to talk about what do we do about the bind that we're in. I think you're talking there is that we can change our minds. We can connect to something which is more good or holy or beneficial for humans as opposed to destruction.
00:31:15
Speaker
corrosion, harm, and death. So I find just that general approach to be really appealing. Could you tell me as far as, one more on the public banking, can you tell me, could you give me an example of the type of transactions or loans or the structure
00:31:44
Speaker
that public banking could be more expedient, affordable, you get the money where it needs to be. Can you give a just kind of couple ideas of how that might function more or differently than what we see now? Well, it could, but I was really enjoying our philosophical conversation.
Funding Community Needs with Public Banks
00:32:05
Speaker
Yeah, good questions. I'm sure some of your listeners are interested in that. Well, public banks, they're
00:32:13
Speaker
Like a state bank is what I'm working on. Here in Oregon, we have a small group of people who push through legislation with our champions in the Senate, obviously, in the House that would establish a task force to really work out the details.
00:32:29
Speaker
But what state banks have in common, just to keep it to state banks, is like I said, they are chartered by the state government. They take state funds and they use them in ways that finance things that benefit the public. So the most, the easiest example to give is funding bond measures.
00:32:57
Speaker
So if a small town needs to replace its sewer system, they usually go to the big banks and the big banks will laugh at them because we won't make enough profit off that. But it's too big for local banks, okay? Certain sized cities. That's a common problem. That's where the biggest need is. But it's not just about need, it's also about things that we can accomplish. So the bank in North Dakota funds student loans.
00:33:27
Speaker
Other options, I don't know what all the bank in North Dakota does. I know it makes farm loans. Farmers are still getting screwed, just like they were back in the populist days, the 1880s, 1890s, and through the 20s. Well, it's still obviously in the 30s too, but they didn't have a state bank. But a state bank can do this. And they've done it in other countries, land banks, they call them, that focus specifically on those kind of things.
00:33:55
Speaker
So we can do that. We can make the clones to farmers and we can direct them in a certain way. Like instead of having a farm bill that's written, dictated by Monsanto and Cargill and whatnot, they're lobbyists. We can do a farm bill locally in Oregon that helps small farmers, organic farmers.
00:34:21
Speaker
The kind of farming that's good for the community as well as the economy and good for people's health We can promote those values because we're not subject to the legal Dictate that we have to make a profit for our investors Because if we do finance it privately and some of these banks are The way it would work is we give them a fixed rate of return and they'd have nothing to say about the way the banks run
00:34:52
Speaker
The bank would be independent of the state government also, so the politicians don't screw with it. And it would be run by banking professionals following sound banking principles.
00:35:02
Speaker
The main difference being that it would be directed towards serving the people of Oregon, helping the economy of Oregon and directed to specific projects that we deem priorities. Minority owned businesses, that's another good example where we could direct loans. We could specifically give favorable terms, more favorable terms. I mean, all these banks would be
00:35:30
Speaker
be able to get, excuse me, all these loans would be more favorable than from the big banks because we're not sucking any profit out of it. We are charging fees and we're charging more than our costs for one thing to protect the bank, but for another thing over and above what we need to have that safety reserve in the bank, we'll be able to give that back to the state. That's what they do in North Dakota.
00:35:55
Speaker
So excess profits go back in the state coffers. As I get, I don't know, not exactly a dividend because the state, I guess the state, well, it depends on how you fund it, who owns it exactly, technically. But anyway, so that money could be used to fund, oh, I don't know, education. Gee, wouldn't that be nice, Ken, being a
00:36:18
Speaker
Yeah, thank you. Please, public education. Yeah, or a universal healthcare system at state level until we reform federal government and then we can get it at the national level. Actually, we'd probably have both. The state level administration of a federal program like Canada, that's optimal because then you've got the different states experimenting with different ways of doing it and finding the best way.
00:36:47
Speaker
So, but, you know, we'd have, I'm getting off onto the subject of universal health care, but we could move that forward and make it seem more feasible. It's already feasible because it'll save so much money, but it's with this argument, say, look, here's more money for it. There's more money for education. Maybe we can even lower taxes. Theoretically, we could. I mean, ideally, though, that would
00:37:14
Speaker
We really have to rein in the federal government, I'm sorry. As long as the corporations are in control, everything the state pays for for a universal healthcare system, everything the state pays for for anything else is going to be more expensive. We can't keep taxing people forever to meet that cost of paying off the raunchier.
00:37:41
Speaker
Everybody we're talking Rick Stagenborg and great to talk philosophy public policy and You indicate a little bit of ink Linda talking about art.
Art's Role in Society and Change
00:37:53
Speaker
I'm gonna I'm gonna kind of preface I'm gonna create a little bit of a backdrop for this just kind of to frame it One of one of the things
00:38:06
Speaker
is that art is always important in any society or any culture. And I want to, as a backdrop, just talk about what I see as big mistakes sometimes historically, where I view art as being something just kind of an unto itself human expression. This is something very inexact in framing this.
00:38:34
Speaker
And at times I've seen movements that I've studied, including communism, which look a certain way of religion and art. And I believe when we look at art as just a manifestation of
00:38:52
Speaker
a dominant ideology. So I'm going to give you an example. So in Chinese, the cultural revolution, the idea was to kind of extinguish or eliminate a bourgeoisie kind of art forms, right? And we could think of fine paintings and there could be an excess there.
00:39:14
Speaker
But then there was a narrowing and a legitimacy of what art is narrowed down to. Does this emerge from the people in class consciousness? It gets way too cute. And you end up in an idea of regulating art. And I think when we talk about God and art, there's something about humans, say what you will, whatever you believe, that these things seem to be largely ungovernable when it comes to
00:39:44
Speaker
behavior. So I've always been kind of, you know, thinking about in terms of social, like how we look at art, but I was wondering your perspective, as far as
00:39:55
Speaker
Because art can be so useful in making change and changing consciousness. You could talk for a while, or I could talk for a while, Rick, trying to explain something. And then somebody sees a painting or a picture that shows the atrocity or what's going on. And it did it. That's what got from point A to B. So with that kind of long exposition in the background, I was just wondering what you thought art is.
00:40:25
Speaker
Well, that's a really good question. You know, I went to college undergraduate for eight years and studied. I think I took at least a survey course in just about every subject there is, except fine arts. I never touched fine arts. The closest I came was studying Spanish in college. And I didn't really have an appreciation for it. I'm sort of a left brain person. And when I look at modern art, I say, oh my God, you know.
00:40:56
Speaker
I don't have time to sit around and guess what you meant or speculate on this and that. Tell me what you're talking about. And I always kind of related the kind of art that you're talking about, like Diego Rivera. Wow, it's right there, what the message is. So I do appreciate that kind of art. I'm one of those guys, I don't know art, but I know what I like.
00:41:20
Speaker
And that's what I like. But I do now understand more since I've been involved in activism, the power of art, it really is important.
00:41:30
Speaker
your lead into this too. What do we mean by art? I certainly don't restrict art to the fine arts or classical music or any of that stuff. Art is simply an abstract expression. There's all kinds of different ways to do it. Maybe the way that I speak about certain things is artistic. Maybe it's a form of poetry. Like you said, I don't believe we should restrict the definition. It is what it is.
00:42:00
Speaker
And maybe it should be defined by the function. Maybe art evokes something in you that stirs you to a greater consciousness. And all of that is promoting what I was talking about with God. You said you're more comfortable thinking about
00:42:17
Speaker
unity and blah, blah, blah. Well, that's not as opposed to God. That is God. It's the same thing. Give it what word you want. It's the same thing. You know, I went to a UU fellowship one time and mentioned the word God in that. Oh my God, somebody just freaked out. You freaked out. Don't mention God in this place. I'm like, okay, what do you want me to call it? And I met another person in another UU congregation.
00:42:46
Speaker
who I mentioned, God. And she said, oh, no, I'm an atheist. And I said, really? What do you believe in? I mean, you come to you, you, what is this universal of the universal principles? And she said, well, it is the universe. And they said, you mean God?
00:43:07
Speaker
Of course, that's not really strictly true because most people would conceive of God as being beyond the physical universe, a higher dimension. But that's not really that abstract if you've studied any modern physics. There are higher dimensions. Certainly mathematically, you can construct models of them. But in particle physics, string theory says that there have to be.
00:43:31
Speaker
higher dimensions. So when you talk about things that we can't explain through physics, but we can observe, like how my brain tells my hand to move, you know, is that because some sensory input translated through my brain and my brain automatically did, or is it because I have free will? And how many of your listeners don't believe in free will? Of course, you're a philosopher, you know that we don't know free will exists.
00:44:00
Speaker
That's an act of faith too. The fact of the matter is we construct our own realities and we choose which ones we want to live in. So I understand the ugliness of the physical reality that I live in. I also understand there's a lot of beauty. So one of the things that art can give us is remind us that there's all that beauty for those of us who've chosen to steep ourselves in this ugliness. We need that too, to be human.
00:44:30
Speaker
And to be, I think, the manifestation of some higher oneness that has a power of its own. But that power is multiplied exponentially when it's a power of collective intent and belief and action. All right, I'm taking the Rick Stagenborg course.
00:44:57
Speaker
philosophy and social policy.
Learn More About Rick's Work
00:45:00
Speaker
Everybody, it's been great to chat with you, Rick, and everybody. I'm going to have Rick just mention a couple places for you to find out about the issues that are important to him that he works on. Again, Soldiers for Peace International and public banking and
00:45:26
Speaker
So, folks, you know here I got it as oregonpublicbanking.com as the website to learn about within the state of Oregon initiatives towards the idea of public banking.
00:45:40
Speaker
Rick, could you leave the listeners with maybe a place to find you if they want to follow up with, you know, is all politics and thinking and philosophy or anything like that? But folks, if you want folks to plug into what you're up to, how did they do that? Well, it's not so much what I'm plugging into what I'm doing exactly, but you can find out more about public banking and what we are doing.
00:46:10
Speaker
through the Oregon Public Banking Alliance by going to oregonpublicbanking.com. And I'm also deeply involved in Healthcare For All Oregon. And you can learn about that at hcao.org. That's for HealthcareForAllOregon.org.
00:46:30
Speaker
And I guess one place you can go to learn more about what I'm doing for peace, one of the groups I'm with is Veterans for Peace. And they have a national website, veteransforpeace.org. They're doing important work. So that's one of the ways that I'm working in the anti-war movement.
00:46:51
Speaker
Yeah, thank you so much, Rick. I want to personally thank you for the things that you do as I love chatting with you. And heck, you know, kicking around the philosophy, talking about important issues, I can tell you, hearing you talk about the connection between, you know, the banking, finance, you know, war, what's going on with the Citizen United, as far as, you know, our politics and party politics, I just really appreciate
00:47:20
Speaker
your analysis, kind of pulling those things together, because I think what we're talking about are all big and heavy and can kind of collapse on your right public banking. What about our election system? Why is there something rather than nothing? What is our, you know, there's, there's these, these, these big things. And I think, um, I think, uh, you, you really help with, um, kind of pulling together and, uh, inspiring towards action. I just really love chatting with you and, uh, really wanted to thank you from the bottom of my heart for coming onto the podcast.
00:47:55
Speaker
This is something rather than nothing.