What is Symbolism? - With Matthieu Pageau

so hello everybody I like to introduce you to my brother Matthew and some of you might have seen Matthew we did a conversation with Jordan Peterson all three of us discussing the story of Abraham and so Matthew and I we're used to speaking we're used to talking about symbolism together we've been talking about it for me since we were teenagers and so we decided that we're going to try to have these discs on verse a Chinon line to talk about what symbolism is you know what are the categories and and what are the criteria for a proper symbolic interpretation of a story um but hopefully we'll be able to do it because we have our own shortcuts in our own way of talking about things so we're going to make a big effort to to be comprehensible to everybody so so here we go so so now I even have to use your name in English I'm used to speaking to you in French that's not easy alright so so I'll call you met you because I can't say Matthew it's not possible all right so I met you one of the things that one of the things I want to start with is so I've been getting a lot of the comments that I'm getting about about symbolism and a diggities comments keep keep coming back and I try to address a little bit in my my video about about simple its symbolic versus literal interpretation but people seem to really want to oppose those two things they really want to oppose this idea of like a factual literal world and then a world of meaning but for both of us in our in our discussions it seems like that is just not how it works maybe we can start by giving us your your vision of that and we can start the discussion that way yeah well I think that's one of the major problems with people in symbolism today is that we understand the world in a completely different way as it used to be understood and it's such a fundamental difference that trying to understand the world and it truly symbolic wave requires such a a transformation of your of your of your mind of your presupposition it's a really hard pill to swallow to be able to understand symbolism in a way that won't force you to make a distinction between meaning and fact so if you if you're used to thinking in a materialistic way which we all are everyone's a materialist today in my opinion because science is completely dominated everything so it's helped us to understand a lot of things but it's also hindered us to understand other things in completely different fields of things so so basically if we want to recapture what symbolism really is we have to go way back and think of the universe in completely different terms as we do today so basically the way we understand things today is we interpret everything everything in terms of matter and energy basically instructor so that's how everything's understood the only causality left today is a sort of mechanical causality where there's a transfer of energy or transfer of matter or so it's a mechanistic way of understanding reality so if you understand reality like that you can't really understand symbolism the way it was the way it was understood in the past and the way it's described in the Bible yeah I mean I think one of the ways that I've been trying to to help people to see symbolism again is to try to get people to dive back and in their experience to to kind of go back to the lived experience let's say so the way that you encounter a tree is not the same you don't encounter a tree in the same category that a scientist would analyze a tree or the way you encounter you know the heavens or the way you encounter earth they're not the same categories and so trying to get people to to to to go back to categories and the craziest thing is that those the symbolic categories are really there they're at the base of our of our existence and they're still there even if they're still there today right yet if we pretend that they're not like you know categories like high and low you know you know even even things like hot and cold like hot and cold are not scientific categories they're categories of experiences so these these basic categories of experience to hire our keys they're still and they still have exactly the same meaning as they used to it's all still there but we don't interpret it in the right way to make it significant enough to pay attention to it yes one of one of the ways that that that you've talked about that you talked about about to me before and you've even written about in some of your texts is this idea of at least for a moment at least for let's say the the experience to try to get a sense of how things come together and have meaning is to - for for a specific moment to shut down to try to shut down the the let's say the the quantitative you know scientific way of approaching the world and also so I mean and it's the craziest thing is it's not that that hard to do I remember because we we still think in the other way right a lot of in a lot of ways I remember hearing recently a podcast with some Harrison and he was talking about he said said something like when you drink water it doesn't matter what you think you're always drinking h2o I'm like that's not true no one drinks h2o we drink wet we drink cold we drink warm we drink you know flavor crashing there's nothing to do with I mean did not not not completely nothing to do but the category of of - you know hydrogen and in it is like it's not it's that's not the same as as the categories of experience yeah yeah so the only problem with that I guess is that people will think that it makes it arbitrary which which it doesn't because they're still universal experiences that all humans have it doesn't mean it because it's it's some interpreted through the lens of our consciousness it does it mean that it's arbitrary in the sense that every anybody could say whatever they want to interpret it however they want yeah so that's the only problem with the idea of bringing it back to your experience I agree with that's what people have to do but they have to keep in mind that the human experience is a universal experience some things are universal in the human experience we all eat we all sleep we all work we all read etc etc so the human experience is not random or they're arbitrary it's universal and in a way it's funny because to get to true symbolism you almost have to go you almost have to destroy what people usually think what it is to give meaning to something like you have to go beyond the emotional or personal you know a version of what happens and then go back to the really basic basic ground level kind of almost you know primed primordial theory X or something it's like so so the grass the experience of the grass isn't that isn't like that you know that that nice Saturday that you spent with your family and now the grass for you reminds you of that that nice moment that you spent you know the reality of grass has more to do with the fact that it's below your feet that it's it's down there you know that it you know that it's it's all these it's like a chaotic mix of different things that are just there at the on the on the surface of the earth rather than you know that but maybe that participates in the reason why laying in the grass on that nice Saturday was a pleasant experience problem it does actually but you have to go beyond that little that like psychological literary type of interpretation to get to the baser reality yeah just because it's interpreted through human consciousness doesn't mean that it's like a personal individual interpretation it can be but those that's not how symbolism works because I don't care about some person's individual interpretation of something when it when that interpretation is based on nothing but their little ideas symbolism becomes important when the interpretation is universal I mean that's one of the criterias which by which we can distinguish real symbolism from the kind of symbolism you can find in a movie or or in a story that that's just been made up by someone on the street and even then most of the time when people tell a story or write a movie they will use universal symbol because otherwise nobody would care exactly so even when it is interpreted through individuals if they want people to care about their their interpretation of reality they'll make it Universal otherwise nobody cares right and that's so in a way the idea would be to say that symbolism is really it's really the way that our our consciousness is written in a way it's like it's what it's what could what makes us what makes it possible for us to even perceive and engage the world is these basic structures that are that are that were made out of you know that are that our experience is made out of I mean that's symbolism it's really very I mean it's really at the base it's really what makes us what makes it possible for us to engage with the world that's the same the same structure as the religious the religious hierarchy like the religious symbolism yes so yeah in fact the basic structures of symbolism are so Universal that even people who would like to deny them are are into those structures they can't escape it so like a scientist let's say even an atheist he's working on a scientific discovery or something like that he's trying to perform an experiment he can't escape the basic structures of symbolism so so what is this person doing he's trying to unite a theory that he has an abstract theory a metaphysical idea he's trying to join that with the facts that he observed so that this scientist is he's a human between heaven and earth trying to mediate between heaven and earth he's trying to mediate his abstract theory with a concrete fact so the scientist whether he likes it or not is participating in the symbolic worldview he's a mediator between heaven and earth whether he likes it or not and when I say I talked about this was when I went talked to Jordan Pederson when I say have an I mean meaning so theoretical meaning and when I say earth I mean the factual reality concrete reality and that's what it means in the Bible and that means in in pretty much all traditions so yeah and I totally because I made I made recently I made that video about how science is nested in religion trying to talk a little bit about that as well and and it was funny because just what is it like a few a few like a week later I heard I heard I hate always harping on sam Harris but I heard I heard Sam Harris speaking about the phenomenon of emergence and he was talking about how we see these different these different patterns appear at different scales of reality and how you know like let's say the same patterns appear at a biological level that as a city and he was trying to like he was really struggling to to make those jumps those qualitative jumps between you know quarks and atoms to you know a person to a city until any any youth he kept using the world higher-order phenomena he kept using this hierarchical language about these higher orders of manifestations and I thought wow man you're sure you're a religious thinker you don't don't even know it yeah and I think I I listen to that also and I think the answer was also in because what the person said is you don't want to explain higher levels of phenomenon with the lower levels because it's extremely complex that's not go complex so summer has been like that answer okay I don't know but if other the outside is that I'll go ahead keep going yeah so it's so extremely complex that giving an explanation as that order would probably be impossible and even if it is it would be coherent to us as humans you see so right there it's important you can't get away from it you can't get away from the fact that we are humans we are observing phenomenon we can't extract ourselves from the equation of knowledge so the scientists the materials tries to step away from the universe and look at it as if he's not in it yeah and which is fine to a certain degree it's fine to understand such certain things like mechanical causality the perfect way to do that is to distract yourself from from reality but you still can't escape the other reality which is the ancient way of thinking where it's centered on on the human it's centered unconsciousness and so basically the scientists can try to create a worldview in which he's not there and in which his theories don't exist then that model of the universe but it's problematic for certain things it's problematic so it's also probably problematic to included so there's a reason why science has discovered materialistic science has discovered a whole bunch of things that the traditional worldview hasn't discovered yeah because it's useful to get out of the system but so ideally I think it reaches a limit that's so important region hits me I think it has any set limit I think I think quantum physics is one of the signs that this limit has been reached because they reached a point where the observer can't can't get out of the equation so you have to admit as an observer that when you look at the phenomenon you you are impacting the phenomenon there's no way out now there's no way out yeah so they have reached that limit and so it's going to come to them soon they're going to have to deal with that limit I don't I don't think they're dealing with it I think they're going to have to deal with it though I mean what does it mean yeah it seems like there was a whole bunch of things that happened at the mid at the mid maybe like post war period that because it was not it wasn't just that observation but it was also good as good as your own completeness theorem yeah it's a theory same problem right and then and then Heidegger I think I think Heidegger was part of that and just Heidegger presenting the idea of presenting this idea that you the way that being presents itself to us like I was saying at the beginning the way that we encounter the world as as consciousness is not the same as the as the technical it's a kind of scientific way of viewing the world in it you cannot you can't discount the other completely you just just can't because then you don't know how to act in the world and so seems like he's like maybe it's taking a while for people to kind of come to the as a finality of what that's going to give but I mean hopefully this is this is it this is happening right now that people are going to start and I think that one of the things that Jordan Peterson seems to be doing is tapping into that uneasiness that people have about seeing the limits of science but then coming at it from a scientific point of view and trying to to help people see it without completely without without because people without becoming insane get it up without becoming it seriously because you can if you if you delve too much into this kind of universe of self referential contradiction you you can go insane so you can lose everything so the idea is not to I mean my interest in traditional cosmology doesn't come as a cost of scientific knowledge and other thing and not at all they're not opposed they are but they shouldn't be they should they should team up it possible so but what the things the people who are materialists have to understand is that is going to eventually happen is that traditional cosmology should not be interpreted in terms of materialism right because when you do that it's ridiculous so they're right but when they laugh at religion when they laugh at the religious worldview in the traditional worldview they find it ridiculous they're right because the reason is they're trying to look at it with their own lens their own materialism they're trying to look at something that's fundamentally not materialistic so yes it doesn't work it's ridiculous but the worst part of that is that is that it's not just is not just the the atheists that are doing that they're reacting to religious people doing that yeah exactly yeah and then interpreting the religious because of the traditional cosmologies with their materialist point of view and then saying absolutely ridiculous things in doing so and so yes so the Atheist has every reason to mock them except it's a desert or desert but I have zero animosity toward or 80s I have German animosity towards skeptics because they're not they're not responding to religion really they're responding they're answering to the problem of people who are essentially materialist and don't know it and interpret the Bible for example with materialism and even though it doesn't work they still stick to it so so I think you gave an example in one of your videos I'm not sure which one but yet an example of stuff you asked somebody what does it mean when he says he went up into heaven gentle let's say for example Elijah goes up and dad what does that mean does it mean that he goes up into the atmosphere and then into outer space or something like that if it becomes ridiculous immediately so there has to be a stage where people who are scientifically minded stop interpreting a look like that okay don't worry about what certain religious people safe if they interpret it like that it's not it that's not what has to be critiqued that's simply wrong what has to happen is we have to read understand what it means to go up into heaven failure that's just an example pretty much everything has to be in a wave reinterpreted according to a cosmology that allows it and that cosmology is is the one I was describing it with Jordan Pederson it it's a man is a mediator between heaven and earth and that's how things have to be interpreted in the Bible so when it says go up into heaven you have to interpret it like that it was heaven has that meaning it doesn't mean the atmosphere does it mean that so that doesn't mean the atmosphere at the same level that when when Samara says higher level phenomena it means that one phenomena is stacked on top of the other if you can't you can't use the language of hierarchy to describe these higher levels of manifestation and then Mock the idea of oh you're silly sky God in heaven it's like that you're using the same word they're using exactly the same language yes in the same structure but you're mocking mine yes but that's the thing they're not mocking your structure they're mocking the people yeah who still insist on interpreting it in a in a materialistic way as in the way the way we were just laughing at it means going up into the atmosphere so they are not mocking that they are mocking the people who still interpret it in a way that doesn't make sense if we can make people understand what it means then I don't think there's going to be as much discrepancy between science and traditional cosmology in fact I think there's none yeah because they're not talking about the same thing hardly ever and what's interesting is what I found in kind of my own research is what one of the difficulties that people have is that when you read medieval writings and when you read let's say the ancient it's difficult for people to understand because those medieval those medieval writers were not comparing themselves to some that didn't exist yet like they weren't comparing their discourse to a scientific discourse because that the scientific discourse just wasn't part of their world and so they just speak forthrightly and now when we look at it with our own lens we see it just seems to be absolute gibberish it doesn't make any sense or what's interesting is that in the transition you can catch like in the transition between the traditional worldview and and the modern world view you can catch glimpses of people saying oh wait a minute no no no don't don't don't think this is like the same way that you're you're like you know hitting a hammer on a piece of wood so like in Dante for example there's places where he actually says he talked about ascending into heaven and and you know encountering the encountering higher spirits in the different heavenly spheres and then he says he says no the spirits don't actually inhabit two heavenly sphere atmospheres it's a condescension of the heavenly language for us to be able to understand a higher truth that we we speak about it in those terms as like well you know and she was right at the transition before like the scientific the scientific revolution and so he was already seeing that people were changing the ways of thinking and he was trying to prevent them from getting having like a science fiction version of like a Marvel Comics version of spirituality like the gods live another planet yes because that's what happened that's actually a good point because that's exactly what happens if you don't make the proper language shift because the word shift I mean if you're if you're naive you don't realize that the meaning of words shifts constantly so if like like what you're saying before water is h2o it might be that today but it's extremely naive to think that in the time of the Bible for example when when the book of Genesis was written that that's what water meant it did it meant something else it meant it meant something I had nothing to do with any chemical composition or anything like that so we always have to be aware that word shift so for example I mean and the a natural way that word word shift when your knowledge of the universe increases so if you say for example earth means matter okay so that's what it used to mean and there's a reason why it meant that because all matter came from the land from the earth okay so when your your your knowledge of the universe expands then you realize that there's matter that's not in the soil in the earth so then you have to expand your category right so now you invent you use the word matters that our earth let's say so now you've separated those two categories but they weren't separate before when all things came from the earth then there was a coincidence between the metaphysical category called matter and the concrete reality that we call the soil the earth but when your knowledge expanding the word but if you don't keep up with that shift of language then you start to say things that don't make sense and then it's things look ridiculous no because and and it's funny because it's like people who criticize the religious worldview or criticize the ancient ancient vision of the world it's like either you really have to think that everybody was on drugs or something that's what you would have to think because it's so disconnected to the materialist way of interpreting the world that it's like either they were completely delusional and lived in like a losing a world or maybe they were as smart as you or they just were talking about things at a different way yeah I I prefer the second because it's more generous and more and ended actually and when you explore that direction you find an amazing that's where you find amazing things you find that's where you can discover the the pearls that are hidden in the ancient texts or else you know you read you read to read stories and it just seems like it's just a bunch of not yet and that and that's how it is interpreted and so their right to their right to market so they ask there has to be an effort to understand what the ancient language was at some point you can't just assume that you know automatically what things what words refer to I mean the example I always use when I talk about these things is the example of the fish I always use that example because I think it's an easy one to understand so I remember when I was when I was a kid there was this Sunday school teacher who said something like he was talking about the story of Jonah and I don't remember what that person was but that person said well we know that Jonah wasn't swallowed by a whale because the text says it's a fish and whales aren't our fish okay so and I was I was pretty young at that time I don't remember exactly maybe eight years old or something and even then I knew there was something wrong with that I knew that didn't make any sense to think that you can use a modern definition of a fish and apply it to a story that's thousands of years old I mean obviously when when people talk about a fish it didn't mean the same the same as what it means today like today a prerequisite to be called a fish and they got that Gill I think the animal has to have guilt but obviously that's not what it used to mean fish were things that lived in the water and that's about is probably that was the definition of a fish and it wasn't a wrong definition it was an incomplete different it was just a different definition of fish the word shifted and now the word fish means something else so we have to be careful not to use modern interpretation of words to interpret ancient story this is very naive it was it was it was something it was a definition like we still have definitions like that like I I use the words like I use the word grass before that's a perfect definition which is similar to the definition of fish who just underwater I mean if you if you took the time to analyze all the different types of botanical species that are that are on the ground that you call grass you think like you're an idiot to say that that they're all the same of course they're completely different in term of their their species and their their their different origins but the that category grass is a perfectly fine category of human engagement so it's like yeah I mow the grass I don't mow like all these different enumerate for you all the different types of plants that I'm mowing when I'm mowing the grass it's like it's the grass that's fly again and and it's the word that that refers to the human experience so that's a good example we don't care about the scientific definition of what grass is like we don't care what it's composed of really we don't we care about the fact that it's in our backyard it makes it look nice or something like that but anyway the idea is we have to be careful not to interpret ancient ancient stories with modern categories and I keep repeating that because that's what 90% of the people who miss read traditional stories and physical stories do there so it solves about 90% of the problem that people have when when they rate at it so when you at least try to find a proper meaning for the categories already the problem of the distinction between the symbolic interpretation and a literal interpretation usually vanishes it usually vanishes right there if you if you try to find the proper meaning of words that dichotomy is usually enough to make it completely disappear so one of the examples I use I use in my mind for that to show that is you say for example in the Bible the snakes in the garden okay if I say that's a symbol of time the snake in the garden is a symbol of time let's say okay so if you have a modern scientific definition of time that makes no sense it looks like I'm just arbitrarily assigning a meaning to that element of the story it looks like I'm just making it up basically but if you have a proper definition of time which fits with with an ancient understanding then it does work it doesn't it's not arbitrary anymore because if you say for example that time used to be understood in a way where it meant the cause of transformation or an influence of transformation something like that that's what time is change that's not that's not changed yeah there's because all this change if the influence of change has change itself something like that it's not what scientists call time today what business is called time has nothing to do with what we just said and it becomes just an empty quantity used to describe a mechanistic world in terms of times and event events in time and space it's not the cause of change it's not an influence of change it's a timing in the in the modern way time it's not seen as a cause of change but it certainly was seen as that in the ancient world time was cyclical transformation like a powerful influence that transformed things changing them into their offices actually changing the light into darkness darkness into light life and death that was time so that definition of time if you use that then you can say the snake in the story of the garden is a symbol of time right no matter for yeah there's no matter we it is the cause of transformation in that story where's the metaphor it vanished just because I use the right definition of the concept of time and I stopped using the scientific mechanistic one all of a sudden when I say symbol it doesn't mean metaphor anymore it doesn't mean an allegory it means nothing of the sort this snake is a cause of transformation in this story it is a symbol of time yeah and what like what for example and what it like I like I kind of like you know this usually is not my usual way of going about understanding symbolism but for people who were kind of coming at it from outside the way the Jordan the way the Jordan Petersons kind of traces that that idea that the snake is like a symbol of time let's say is a good way for people to kind of understand it in the sense that if you're a community let's say and and there's a predator that arise you know a predator that comes from the from comes into your camp that is that exactly a perfect that's that's the most archetypal image of change is then who is a threat that comes from the the outside the threat it's both a threat but it's also it can also be a kind of seduction like it could be either way like it could be either a threat or a fascination or or something that appears from your corner of your eye and that thing is going to is going to tumble is going to make things tumble it's going to make things move yeah you can potentially change yeah transform things like if it bites you it will definitely transform hit your life into debt so set so in that sense symbols are not are not metaphors they're not there and there's certainly not arbitrary metaphor there's certainly not conventional agreements on meaning yeah I think that's really I think that's really if we can get something out of this conversation today I think that's really one of the biggest things that is an obstacle for people to understand symbolism is that people constantly think that symbolism is something which is added on to literal facts and that for example like we both grew up in Protestants in the Protestant world and in it not everybody but for a lot of people we grew up with it was almost as if the idea that something was had a symbolic meaning was almost like a threat to the integrity of the of the thing itself it was always like that like it was going to swallow up the factuality of the thing whereas that is not that's not how it works it is the very very reason why that's part of the story means that it's symbolic it has to be or else how would why would you care about it why would it depart why would it be set up in this pattern story yeah well actually unfortunately it's kind of a vicious cycle because when all you have left is in a story like the Bible in story biblical story is the fact then you want to defend that if you're a Christian let's say when there's no more meaning that's what I mean it's a vicious cycle because when you have the meaning you're more interested in the meaning than the fact really that's what informs you that's what shows us how things work that's what shows you how reality works and it gives you guidance as what I do in this situation if the text has meaning it helps you understand the nature of reality that's actually what it's really supposed to help you with but if you don't have that anymore and you only think that the text is the description of an event without meaning then if you want to remain a Christian you're going to guard that with your life yeah that's a letter doing so lastly the last remnant of your identity is it happens you've got proof then it happened you've got to show that it happened and you don't care I don't care about the meanie I just care that it happens well that's a mistake because the real way to understand the the Bible is through a traditional cosmology it's the events that are described in the Bible are embodiment of metaphysical truth they're embodiment of cosmic truth they're embodiments of social truth their environments of individual troops so at different scales of reality of our experience there are calm constant truths so these are the truth that the Bible are trying to communicate and it's unfortunate that it's been lost to to a great degree but there's work to be done it's work to be done we have to do that work of reclaiming the meaning of of these things just doggedly defending the factuality of a historian is pointless it doesn't do anything it doesn't help because it's the fact contains the meaning but it's the treasure is in the meaning it's not in the end than the fact so the whole point is a is to support and Express and help us understand higher meaning spiritual meanings just like a scientist who performs an experiment it's not the experiments that that has value in itself it's the general truth that the experiment reveals so I mean it's interesting I always find fascinating the story of Galileo that drops to two cannonballs under the Tower of Pisa okay I like that story because it's a perfect example of this dichotomy of meaning and in fact so in that story why do we keep retelling that story do we really care if it happened or not I mean it will be interesting to think that it happened but the reason why we keep restating that story is because that specific event expresses proves benefit a cosmic truth which is gravity which is the nature of gravity so why do we care about that event the dropping of those two cannonballs at the same time from the tower is because it proves a cosmic truth Deborah yeah the same can be said about what's in the Bible and who the event of them dropping the two cannonball I mean some people say that it actually happened I've seen other people say that it doesn't happen and what I say in my mind is I don't care I don't care that as much if it happened I care a lot more that it reveals the nature of gravity right okay and also I think that even when we use the word fact when we talk about a story we especially if we talk about ancient stories the the the notion of what a fact would be in a story that's been I was told three thousand years ago is not is where it doesn't mean a scientific fact right is it that one of the things that I've been trying to get people to see is that to remember something and to attend to something for thousands of years means that whatever it is that happened whatever event that happened has to be compressed like has to be it has to be brought into something that that has meaning for everyone so like I kept thinking about you know like the idea let's say that you know let's say that I did I tell the story of a modern story to an ancient person and in that story the person has a has a gun in it and that other person doesn't understand what the gun a gun is but I can still tell the story I just reduce it and I use the word weapon let's say yeah and then I kind of words and then maybe the word weapon in his language means a lance and then finally it ends up being a lance but it doesn't matter it's the same you're still telling this story compressing the categories in a manner which makes the universal it doesn't have to be it doesn't have to be forensic ly the same thing for it to have for it to be a fact and for it because categories can be enlarged and detailed and can be compressed into more and more compressed categories and you guess and that is important to understand because one of the one of the reasons why the texts are written the way they are is because they focus on the meaning so I mean we don't have the event like let's say we're talking about the story of Abraham we don't have the events anymore we only have a story about the events so the story was was recounted in a certain way and the way it was recounted the purpose of it was so that we understand what is the meaning yeah exactly yeah and Henry and we see that I was thinking about that the other day I was thinking about kind of trying to find examples of that for people to to understand and what one of the things I kept coming coming back to is the idea of crossing a body of water and you know like we have in the Bible we have the flood then we have the crossing of the Red Sea but then I was like okay let's keep going and then it's like oh that's funny because we have Caesar crossing the Rubicon then we have Constantine winning winning his bringing becoming Emperor by fighting a battle on a bridge and then we have there's all these examples then you come up to Washington Crossing the Delaware it's like why is it that all these stories of a change of power happen at the crossing of water in over what a body of water and then some some some cynic 200 years from now would say oh well would Washington that has lots of Delaware you know because of course you didn't it's mythological I can see that it's the same structure as Moses and and all these other mythological structures and like no man that's how reality works we remember that event because that event in those series of events is the most conducive to bringing about the universal meaning that's in that story like that's how we remembered it yeah it doesn't mean it's not because something has a cosmic meaning that that it didn't happen it's ridiculous to think that well that doesn't that doesn't take away from the possibility that some traditional stories are fictional that that's what people have to understand as well I mean it doesn't mean that every story is factual either but what's problematic is this dichotomy this impossibility of accepting the coexistence of a fact and a higher meaning a general universal meaning that was problematic so it's it's what's happening in a lot of cases is a lot of the Christians are defending a materialistic worldview when they do that I don't know I don't think they realize but when they they get annoyed by a symbolic interpretation of the Bible they're essentially defending their enemy basically they're defending a scientific mechanistic world view because that's how they think that makes them might not be aware of it but so a lot of people a lot of religious people not just Christians but I mean a lot of religious people are essentially materials yeah and it's but they they believe in God they happen to believe in God but there's still material it was every other way in every other way and the material is about two sides and it's interesting in terms of meaning because what you haven't you meet you meet like conservative type Christians and their literal like their their real material is in the sense that they'd read the Bible and they see it as like what's written there that's what happened in the same way that I you know ate my my muffin this morning and you know and I mean I cut my moustache like the same level like the same level then you meet liberal Christians were like oh you know like whatever would happen to Biola none of that happened you know it's all these stories and then they so like and the other side of the coin and then those liberal types they then they feel like that it's there now that they can interpret it in whatever way they want because it doesn't really matter anyway so then they come up with crazy interpretation then the conservative Christians they go crazy because they're like yeah well in Iraq if we agree that there's meaning in these if there's symbolism in these stories look at them we don't want to be like them we don't want to be these these crazy pollutant people and the other people on the top on the under under like liberal side they're looking at the Conservatives and thinking what a bunch of morons like they really think that there's a snake on you know we're like in an apple and and then like two naked people like what a bunch of idiots so it's like there's just crazy sides of the same coin they're just two sides of the same coin like it's a detachment it's that's the idea symbolism is the union of fact and meaning so both if you if you lose that Union if you use the possibility of a union like that then yes you either fly up into heaven you lose your money interpret it however the Accu want and it doesn't matter there's no reason or right to it it's just anything goes or you just refuse completely to have any kind of meaning you just stick to the facts oh one of them keeps the fact and the other one keeps the meaning West goes a little bit crazy because when you get detached from facts your ideas your theories about what things link and go fly off in any direction but if you remain attached to a fact it limits what you can say about it it limits the meaning that that you can can give it yeah one of the one of the theories that I've had for like the modern age is that it's been it's been like Adi Incarnation like it's it's taken it's been like a taking the idea of like this the human and divine nature of Christ and like ripping them apart and creating these two these two these two like wild opposites because we often see modernism in terms of materialism and everything but there's a whole other like a cultist occultic like the occultism and and new-age and and all these kind of spiritists type movements that are the the counterweight of the more kind of scientific materialism that's there and those two things develop at the same time like dick at an indie council developing his mechanical scientific things and then you spend the rest of the most of his life like searching for the rosie cross like looking for some esoteric you know invisible society yeah something that yes that's detached from reality and basically that's not concrete well that's just ironic about all this healthy stuff is the people who are preserving the true spirit of traditional thought are scientists because they care about the union of meaning in fact yeah they care about the fact as much as they care about the theory they don't just want theories they don't just want fast they want true knowledge is joining meaning in fact together theory in fact so like a universal theory and with particular facts that's what that's their job they're still doing that so they're preserving that spirit in Texas completely ironic the scientists are the ones who are the most um good at preserving the Union that we're supposed to be preserving as religious people so it's a little bit ironic but at the same time it's kind of their fault that we lost it yeah at the same time because their materialist so they don't view the theory as something real they view it as completely artificial and that well it could it could be argued that that's their problem their main problem is they you met the fact the matter is real but they don't view the theory that they're using to interpret the facts as real yeah why is it not it's not material perhaps what why this life is not real there you go because they're materials it is something is not material they assume that it has no reality whatsoever but it's the same way of thinking that because and they use mass like they use a method massive it's real you know it's a kind of a real it's not a material yes mathematical structures patterns are real they're not real in the sense that they are physical but that's stupid they're real in the sense that they are universal they're actually more real than the individual facts I mean a mathematical pattern has more reality as more universality as more applications implications than any fact I could find yeah why is it not real that's real it's more real than real and and the hierarchy of value is the same thing because you can't they can't avoid it like they even though when they're doing their hardcore sides they try to avoid it you know when they're even justifying why we you would study something rather than study something else they have to put it in the hierarchy of values there's no way of avoiding it you can't you can't get around it yeah it's one of those structures like mathematics it's one of those structures that are so real that there's no way out of it you can you can't get out of it even by denying it you're probably going to enter into that framework of a meaning so so one of the things that I think is a big deal is that I mean I've had people who have written me who are interested in symbolism and what happens the problem that happens when people start to discover symbolism is that not always but often they kind of go insane if you go crazy they start seeing when they start seeing connections between things as if some strange valve is opened up in their mind and it's like they believe like water drank a gallon of wine and it's like well everything is connected and then they they write these long as I've gotten these long emails of people who like just connect things together and it is completely crazy and one of the reasons why rational people don't want to have anything to do with symbolism but a lot of people end up making all kinds of weird connections and it's clearly irrational ways based on largely own personal experience and that's what they want to avoid which I understand so the idea is like the what so let's talk about this what could what could we say are some of the criteria by which we know that something is has meaning by which we know something is worth attending to an ended and is actually connected to something else okay so yeah the criteria let's say you and your interpret you you give an interpretation of a narrative in the Bible if they are an element in the Bible in a story so how what criteria can we use to determine if this interpretation is just some crazy Association or if it's something that's valid if it's a valid meaning that's given to this event in the Bible or this part of the story so the way I see it is it's exactly the same as what scientists use to determine if a scientific knowledge is valid it's first of all you have to look at consistency okay so if somebody says I'm going to use examples with snake again like I did report and somebody says the snake is a symbol of I don't know what do people usually say well they don't know what they're talking about it's a symbol of good fortune and for to something like that that's exact thats what people usually the ones they don't put in symbolism yeah well usually when people don't really understand symbolism they always everything's a symbol of fertility for some reason okay so so that so how do you know if it's in the tradition that that is valid well you have to look at consistency so if you read the rest of the Bible and then there's other examples of it snakes right and then your interpretation of the snakes it's nowhere except at that particular first example that you are looking at then you don't have it you're wrong think again okay so that so it's like the same thing in science I mean if you have a theory about reality and it only applies to a very specific phenomenon they keep working and you don't have anything you're just describing it you just made up a theory to describe just that fact you're trying to have a universal theory that explains a specific fact so it has to apply to different examples different phenomena not just the one so it's the same thing if you're interpreting a symbol you don't want it to work on just that Tory it's ridiculous it has to work all the time so if you say the snake is a symbol of fertility then look at all the other examples of the snakes in the Bible's is it does it make sense the answer is no so it's not that so that's one criteria another one which goes with the first one really is it has to be comprehensive so it has to be equal to include a lot of the stories so if you have a specific pattern that you use to interpret the story that pattern you should be able to use it to interpret a lot of other stories so if you say for example one of the most fundamental patterns in in ancient cosmology is the tree okay the tree the snake those are usually seen as opposites so if that's true then you should finally tree that pattern you should be able to find it in a whole lot of other stories all right so if you use that if you think that pattern is fundamental then fundamental mean it explains a whole lot of things so just like a scientific theory like let's say there is in relation to gravity you should be able to explain a lot of phenomenon with that single theory if you don't this you're missing some some point you're missing a simpler truth a more universal truth so that's that's the other thing well the other I would say criteria is does it provide insight if you have an interpretation of a symbol and it provides you with zero insight into the nature of this story into the facts follow and the fact that preceded it's worthless what's the point so I think you were talking about that at the beginning you were saying about interpreting things horizontally are you talking about that performance so we target before conversation okay I can mention that what is it yet go ahead that we see with symbolism one of the problem we see with symbolism is a kind of a augmentation probably do a video about this but it's like the conspiracy version of symbolism where symbolism is interpreted like on the same level and so an image doesn't refer to a higher reality or to a more it's a universal reversal true it only it's only a code that hides a secret like a secret meaning of something someone's trying to hide from you like the fact that maybe they're aliens or you know like there's a secret society that wants to some for some reason they want they want to hide their communication but then make it available for others like that type of symbolism like who cares about that stuff yeah that doesn't help you live your life yeah and what it the funny thing is that type of symbolism does exist but it's absolutely secondary I mean if you want to understand the Bible forget about that you're not it's not going to help you to understand anything so yeah but I have and I see an example of that I don't remember exactly where but it was somebody who was trying to interpret the story of Elijah and he was talking about the Raven that feeds Elijah and then the interpretation of the person was well the Raven actually refers to a secret society oh my goodness that went and fed Elijah okay I don't remember where I got that from bilateral interpretation and in my in my mind when I saw that I was thinking to myself that gives no understanding of the story whatsoever it doesn't give any more understanding for stories than to say that it's a raven not at all so that's an example of a faulty interpretation it provides you with no higher understanding of a specific story yeah so the idea just like just like a scientific theory you'll find a scientific theory why is it valuable because it allows you to understand a whole bunch of things yeah that it's the same thing with this symbolic interpretation you have certain patterns that are universal and if you use these patterns to interpret the story it will reveal the nature of the story to you it will make it obvious it will make it clear just like a theory reveals the nature of reality when it works when it's right of course has to be correct if you have a wrong theory that it doesn't help you at all same thing with an interpretation if you have a wrong interpretation it will mislead you but if you're honest if you're honest about it you'll see that it doesn't work you're dishonest or you can always fool yourself of course anybody can do that but but that's not this is one of the reasons why certain people are against the idea of a symbolic interpretation is they're worried about this possibility of interpreting things however you want them but that problem is an everyday problem it's not just a problem of interpreting the Bible things the problem of having a faulty interpretation of reality is it is a problem that everyone's faced with so it doesn't go away when you all the sudden you you refuse to do it with a biblical narrative it's something we do every single day in everyday life we interpret reality with a theory if we're wrong where's a groove it hurts them it harms us so that that problem doesn't disappear it's always there so it's there when you interpret the Bible - is there we interpret some something that somebody tells you outside or at your job and it's always there so there's no way out of that out of that problem so one of the one of the craziest ones the craziest ones that someone wrote me recently about about that and about this type of lateral interpretation of symbolism whereas like every symbol that you could come up with was basically a symbol for mushrooms so basically like drugs yeah drugs it was all drugs and it's like you know that doesn't help like how does that help you like why would you read a story that I call a hidden favorite books that a highs references to drugs in it like what's the funny thing is how does anything is the funny the funny part of that is if that person has the right understanding of what intoxication is right then that person would be able to find places in the Bible that actually are about intoxication and understand the deep meaning of intoxication see so if that person has a right honest my frame about understanding a story then is fetish about intoxication would be it would be answered in the Bible because intoxication is part of of the Bible there's that the story of knowing during a wine and mhm it's not absurd to say for example that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a form of intoxication yeah I mean if you interpret it like interpret it like that instead of you and so that's not what they're doing with their you can say yes you're right they're saying is that it's like a hidden veiled it's a hidden meaning which is to show that that you know ancient people took mushrooms to to have to have like spiritual experiences like that's what the story means it's like I'm not even though I'm not even denying that maybe ancient people took mushrooms that spiritual experiences but like it does that really think that that story like that's the point of that story like that yeah but when it is when it is it is in Western civilization is just about someone taking more realization my goodness I don't think you're very good at building a civilization when you're always high on mushrooms I doubt but it's a funny thing is that that symbolism is important in the Bible it is important and that's the thing when you have a an honest approach you will find those places with I hope but not just on it but also a desire to go to more unitive forms of meaning instead of not all about being intoxicated at all not just notice about the inductive but about act but about this idea of a veiled availed illusion to some like social practice and they're not talking about it's like it doesn't even show you the meaning of intoxication it's just to show you that people used to take mushrooms and now they're hiding it from you as yeah the church is hiding from you that that people used to take mushrooms because they they're they're evil and they want don't want you to know that that's a way to they want to control spirituality so they're hiding the fact that people used to take mushrooms but it's still their kind of you know lingering in the stories and it's like it's all about people used to take mushroom it's like yeah well that yeah it's a good example the nation it doesn't even tell you anything about the nature of taking mushrooms but these yeah it's a good example of what you were saying of a horizontal interpretation you just replace something repose about something else it's like symbolism is just a replacement of one thing by another that means something else so that's not what symbolism is the opposite of what symbolism erection symbolism the idea of truth and ilysm is to reveal things not to hide them reveal things that we usually wouldn't understand easily because they're too abstract yeah there's so it's just exactly the same thing as as an a scientific experiment you're performing an experiment it makes the abstract concrete it makes it real then you can recognize it so like like the example I was before dropping the two cannonballs from the Tower of Galileo well it's an event which has cosmic meaning cosmic implications because it reveals the nature of gravity so the whole point of that is not to hide it the nature of gravity to reveal it in an event mm-hmm so yeah so the idea that symbolism is like a crypto language or something like that a cryptic way of talking with opposites because that's what it ends up being yes yeah it's completely false well I think I think that comes from I think that comes from what I was talking about before like that something happened and the late Middle Ages or the earth during the Renaissance or there's this split you know of like the more kind of literal things and then the higher falutin type of of spiritualism let's say are called occultism and all that stuff it seems like that's part of it like that until the whole tradition of secret societies in the West and stuff had they did have that idea somehow hiding genetic freemasons have that idea of like hiding you know the I think I think when they have that ideas because they've lost the meaning that's what I think I mean I've recently read some people talking about the meaning of Freemason stuff and it was supposedly written by a freemason and I was I had I was amazed at how done was how about what it was saying because when I looked at their symbolism I thought it was it makes sense yeah I thought I was expressing universal truth but what I looked at the explanation that the person who wrote the book was giving was who was supposedly a freemason in my mind I was saying you lost your symbolism lost your own symbolism and now you're trying to explain it as a cryptic thing but it's the only reason you're doing that because you've lost it you don't know what it is you don't have what it takes to get to understand it so you're trying to give it some other meaning that has nothing to do with with what it is as I see it anyway no I would say I had the same experience I I yeah I spoke I spoke with it two years ago with a 33rd degree Mason and I was I never met like high low high ranking Mason before so I was like I was asking a lot of questions and they were telling me about some of the symbolism that they have and I was like oh that's actually pretty interesting like they they have like they have like this uncut stone and cut yet again uncut wall and cut walnut like wow that's actually like really traditionally a traditional symbol but then is like and then I was trying to get him like to talk about it and it was like there was nothing beyond it like it was just to its go there's no sense anyways yeah all right I think that now that we've now that we've entered like talking about Freemasonry I think that means it's the time to finish our conversation [Music] all right so I wanna just for the people watching so we tried Matthew and I we tried to say things to speak in a way that's understandable as much as possible but we're so used to discussing symbolism together that it's possible that that maybe sometimes we're off so I'm asking all you guys in the comment section to to go ahead and and ask questions or to tell us if we're how if our aim is right like if our if the level that we're aiming at in in the way we're describing things if it's at the right level so so hopefully Matt you will agree to do this again with me that would be great I hope I hope he does and like I said I announced this during Jordan the interview with Jordan Matthew just she's finishing a book now it's not totally finished but he's almost finished a book about symbolism which really explores the the structures in a very concise and very powerful way and so we're we haven't figured out how we're going to get that out to people if if we're going to have it published by someone if we're going to self-published he's going to self-published but just so you know that that's on the horizon and that it's it's going to we're going to keep announcing the steps of that coming towards you so I hope you all enjoyed this video

Channel: Jonathan Pageau

Views: 94,196

Keywords: Symbolism, Bible, Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, Atheism, science, skeptics, metaphor, Traditionalism, religion, christianity, Christian Symbolism, Biblical Symbolism, Christian symbology, jonathan pageau, pageau, what is symbolism, science and religion, science versus religion, metaphysics of pepe, religious symbolism, symbolic, matthieu pageau, genesis, abraham, mythology, mathieu pageau, sacred art, jordan peterson pepe, the metaphysics of pepe, symbolism in art, symbolism in the bible

Id: 0VIRA6T33o4

Length: 67min 54sec (4074 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 18 2017