Matthieu Pageau: The Symbolic Grammar Hidden in Christianity

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Previously titled “Christian Symbolism, Heaven, Earth, Femininity, & Satan | Matthieu Pageau” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 3, 2026

Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal 2h 42m 2 speakers 8 chapters transcribed 23 days ago
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What does “who are you?” reveal about identity and relational definition?

Curt Jaimungal 0:00
Matthew, how do you interpret a question like who are you? Are you defined relationally? Do you define yourself? Do others define you or is it some combination? Yeah, it's some combination for sure.
Matthieu Pageau 0:12
Yeah. It's a combination of other people telling you what you are and y you. agreeing to it or and also sometimes you defining yourself. It's all of those things. I don't I wouldn't want to live in a world where I'm just defined by others and I wouldn't want to live in a world where it's just me that decides because when you're defined by others it comes with It comes with uh added stuff that you don't necessarily wouldn't be able to give yourself, you know? So if you have a function in society, it doesn't come from you. And that the fact that it doesn't come from you is what gives gives it more than you, you know. So if you're if you're a a police officer, it's somebody else that said that to you, it's not you.
Matthieu Pageau 0:56
If it's you, then you're a criminal. I mean, if you decide on your own that you're gonna do the duties of a a police officer but you're actually not have not been appointed in in that way, then basically you're a criminal, you know, you you're just using force to impose your own personal will on others. So that's just an example, but everything is like that. You you receive an identity from uh others, from society or from above, let's say in But you have to agree, obviously, you have to agree. If you don't agree Yeah, then you struggle with it. I mean you can receive an identity that you don't agree with. You just have to f deal with it. I guess you figure out what you do with that. You don't have to accept it either.
Curt Jaimungal 1:40
So who are you, Matthew?
Matthieu Pageau 1:42
Who am I? Well, I'm a human being for s for starters. And uh hopefully. I mean I could def define myself in many ways. I'm part of a country called Canada and part of a province called Quebec. And what I do is I th uh think a lot and I write. So I try to write at least. I would like to write more. Uh so yeah, if I would define myself uh in terms of what I do, I would say um I think a lot and I try m as much as I can to have it be useful to others and also to have it correspond to reality and to not just be some ideas that I personally have. So it's kind of related to the question you just asked. I mean, I'm not trying to understand things just for myself. I'm trying to understand things for everyone. And obviously that includes myself.
Matthieu Pageau 2:37
So I'm interested in let's say Nature, I wanna understand reality. That's really what I'm what I do most of the time. Trying to understand how things Not necessarily how things work, but what they mean mostly. I used to be more interested in how things worked. kind of like physics and s and chemistry, things like that. I still am to some degree interested in that stuff. But I kind of switched a little bit. At one point I I realized that what I really wanted to know was what it's all about, like what it means. What's the significance of events and just nature reality, what's the significance of it? Why? Why are we here and things like that? More than how how things are constructed and how the how the things work with energy and uh
Matthieu Pageau 3:25
Although that's interesting. I'm not I'm not downplaying that at all. It's just that at one point you gotta kinda choose a path, you know, you gotta specialize a little bit in your knowledge or else you kinda go nowhere. So that's what I did at one point.
Curt Jaimungal 3:38
I also think. That's what characterizes me. I think all the time and I'm trying to understand reality. That's what motivates me. Where does that come from for you?
Matthieu Pageau 3:49
Um, I guess where it comes from is probably just my basic personality. I mean, I'm not um If I compare it to other things I could be doing, let's say, I mean I could I wouldn't be uh I wouldn't be a fireman or a police officer or anything like that. You see, you have to compare it to make sense of it. Uh I'm not a I'm a d I do things. I do things, but usually when I do things it's for myself, you see? So that's why I'm comparing it to People who do things for others like like what I mentioned is a good example, you know, people who have uh service uh who work at service things.

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