The Plowman in the Library

1,697 words

I’ve spent the last 21 days in quarantine. To be honest, staying inside these last three weeks has been relatively easy for me. After all, I spent most of my time in college by myself reading books in the university library. Looking back at my experience in college, I think my real education came not from the lectures or assigned readings, but from the books I decided to read on my own out of interest and curiosity. One such book was a prose version of Piers Plowman, the 14th-century poem attributed to William Langland. In many ways, the themes of this poem reflect both my times in college and the last three weeks spent inside my home during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

When I was a teenager, I didn’t want to go to college. I didn’t really enjoy high school, but that was mostly because my high school seemed like a daycare for non-whites who would have otherwise been out in public committing crimes. And while I enjoyed writing stories and playing heavy metal music as a teenager, I may not have been mature or committed enough to go to a music school or a writing program. If I had any career plan as a teen, I remember wanting to become a car salesman after high school as it seemed interesting and I thought I would be good at it.

Naturally, my mom wanted the best for me, so she insisted that I go to college. She even helped me apply for scholarships and supported me for the four years it took to get a bachelor’s degree. I didn’t know what field I wanted to major in or study, so I just picked History as that seemed the most appealing to me. At the time, I thought that it didn’t matter what major I selected. I just thought that having any college degree would get me a fancy job after graduation.

The bright side was that I was able to find a state university where the student population was overwhelmingly white. Of course, being a metalhead and the son of a police officer who was well-versed on the differences in racial crime-statistics, I quickly realized that I didn’t have much in common with the typical, liberal-minded college student. I also started to become aware of the anti-white propaganda in many of the required courses, particularly the mandatory sociology, anthropology, and introductory history courses.

As much as I disliked high school, I now appreciate the fact that my high-school teachers were too busy disciplining the non-white students to spread much of the anti-white propaganda that is now part of the public educational curriculum. Looking back, my first two years of college were a mix of classes that talked about white privilege, white colonialism, and systemic racism. I also started to notice that most of the professors of these required courses were of a certain ethnic background. Not surprisingly, it was these certain professors that pushed the anti-white propaganda the most. I was very naïve during my first year, as I always tried to present crime statistics and historical nuance to the diatribes the professors spewed against European history, culture, and people.

It was my sociology professor in my freshman year that really gave me a rude awakening. After countering the professor’s claims that European settlers knowingly engaged in biological warfare by giving infected blankets to Native Americans, she told me after class that if I continued to question her “authority and knowledge” that I would be kicked out of the class and given a failing grade. From then on, I kept my mouth shut and wrote exactly what I was expected to write in all my essays and exams.

This is why for the longest time I have looked back in anger and resentment on my college experience. None of my teachers ever taught or encouraged me to think for myself or to think critically. The only critical thinking they encouraged was against “dead, racist white men.” They only wanted me to remember their theories and regurgitate them (preferably verbatim) on the following writing assignments or exams.

Yes, I know what you’re probably thinking. I shouldn’t have chosen a liberal arts major because that is simply how undergraduate, survey classes are set up and structured. Or perhaps you might be thinking, “if you didn’t like college, why didn’t you just leave?” To that, I would say that at the time, everyone like my mom and myself assumed that getting a college degree, even a bachelor’s, would allow any person to get a decent job. So for four years, in order to get a good job after college, I kept my mouth shut, my head down, and wrote and said everything my professor expected of me. Even if it meant repeating a lot of anti-white propaganda.

Without any friends I could socialize or share my true thoughts and beliefs with, I spent most of my time in the library. Once I was finished with my assignments and studying, I decided that I would make the most of my college library and see if there were any books that I might find interesting. That’s when I started reading various works of European literature available in the library that were published by Penguin Classics.

Before changing their design a few years ago, Penguin Classics were color-coded on the spines of each book: purple being the works of Greek and Roman antiquity, yellow for the literature of the Middle Ages, and red for the works of the renaissance. What originally caught my eye were all the Icelandic Sagas, which were all coded in yellow. As I reached for Njal’s Saga, a book that was next to it fell to the ground. As I picked up the book and glanced at the cover it quickly caught my interest, so I sat down and started reading it. The book was Piers Plowman.

Piers Plowman is an epic poem written in the late 14th century by an obscure English cleric who historians believe to be William Langland. The poem is a mix of Christian allegory and social satire, which discusses the meaning of life in relation to fate and destiny. The main character and narrator, Will, represents the common man and the “will” of the human spirit. The story occurs in eight dreams. In each of the dreams, Will searches for three characters that will teach him how to live an ideal Christian life. These three characters are Dowel (do well), Dobet (do better), and Dobest (do best). In each of the dreams, Will often interacts with a plowman by the name of Piers, who is often at the center of events and represents different themes in each dream, from salvation and sacrifice to patience and penitence. While it is unknown whether the poem has an official ending or conclusion, the final dream has Will on a pilgrimage to find Piers the Plowman, only to run into the personifications of old age, pestilence, and death.

I always had a hard time understanding philosophy books and perhaps that is the reason that Piers Plowman made such an impact on me. It seems that many philosophers try to define what things the three allegorical characters in Piers Plowman represent: namely, how to consistently do good, strive to be better, and remain motivated to be the best. I’ve often asked myself: did my years in college make me a person who does well, strives to be better, and has the motivation to be the best I can be?

During my college years, I read almost every work of European literature that I could find in the university library: ancient historians like Herodotus and Procopius, Scandinavian biographies like the Saga of King Hrolf Kraki, and other epic poems like the Song of Roland. I enjoyed immersing myself in the great works of our history, our culture, and our people. In this regard, I made a commitment to read a certain amount of pages each day, try to read a little more and a little faster each day, while having the overall goal of reading all the classic works of European literature that caught my interest. So while we can debate whether college made me a more skilled person or not, I will say that having the time and access to reading so many great works of Western literature is something that has definitely enriched my life for the better.

I wouldn’t say that I am against education, but I will say that college is not for everyone and should not be for everyone. Higher education was designed for a small elite of each society who would both appreciate the education process while also having the aptitude to utilize and apply what they learned to better their societies. In our modern times, colleges have become an over-bloated industrial complex that cares more about racial quotas and creating debt than maintaining educational standards. And even though I hated the anti-white propaganda that was preached in my college days, my younger friends tell me that their current classes and professors are far worse. After hearing their horror stories, I think I got off easy.

As I have spent the last three weeks in quarantine, I have often been reminded of the many nights I spent reading books alone in the library during my college years. Of all the books I read, Piers Plowman is the book I’ve thought about the most. It was written during a period of plagues and revolts. During these uncertain times, it reminds me that if I can find inspiration in reading about a plowman in the library, we can find hope in the most unexpected places and things. I strive each day to be a positive influence in the Dissident Right, and improve the work I do as a nationalist while staying motivated in helping our people embrace white identity politics.

You don’t need a fancy degree to see that the future belongs to us. But my mom putting me through college definitely didn’t hurt.