Windmills, Windfalls, and Giants: A Don Quixote for Our Age

Section 1: The Invisible Wind

There is a process underway that is as powerful and invisible as the wind. Because we cannot see it, we often only notice it when something we rely on—a bridge, a hospital, a right—suddenly collapses.

For decades, we have been told a story that favors the "Windfall." In this story, the highest goal is the sudden grab, the massive profit, and the private gain. It is the logic of the storm. It doesn't build; it harvests. It treats our shared world as a pile of debris to be claimed by the fastest or the strongest. When we follow the path of the Windfall, we stop being citizens who belong to a community and start being bystanders waiting for the next disaster to see what we can snatch from the wreckage.

The alternative is the "Windmill."

A windmill is a choice. It is a machine we build together to sit in the path of the invisible and turn it into something that serves everyone. It doesn't wait for a lucky break; it creates a steady flow of power. In a functioning society, the "Windmill" represents our schools, our healthcare, our infrastructure, and our laws. These are the tools that equalize power, making sure that the energy of our nation isn't just a "windfall" for a few at the top, but "electricity" for every home.

Section 2: The Misrecognition

In Don Quixote, there is a scene where the knight attacks a windmill because he believes it is a giant. For centuries, this moment has been read as a joke—proof that Quixote is insane, that he can't tell reality from fantasy.

But what if we have misread the scene?

What if Cervantes was not mocking Quixote for attacking windmills, but warning us about what happens when we mistake the machinery of collective power for the enemy?

Quixote sees giants everywhere because he has been trained by stories of individual heroism, conquest, and glory. He cannot recognize a windmill because a windmill is not a thing you fight—it is a thing you build, maintain, and share. It represents a completely different logic: not extraction, but generation. Not domination, but collaboration.

When Quixote attacks the windmill, he is not crazy. He is disoriented. He has been so thoroughly shaped by one kind of story that he cannot see the structure that would actually serve him.

We are Quixote now.

Section 3: The Collapse of Realism

Quixote had a companion named Sancho Panza, whose job was to be "realistic." Sancho was the one who said, "That's not a giant, it's a windmill." He was the voice of common sense, the practical man who could see things as they were.

But here is the problem: Sancho was right about the windmill, but he had no explanation for why everything kept falling apart.

Because the world was, in fact, falling apart. Spain was collapsing. The economy was financializing. The empire was hollowing. And Sancho, the realist, had no framework to understand why. He could only observe the symptoms and tell Quixote to stop being ridiculous.

This is where we are now. The institutions of interpretation—the experts, the journalists, the stewards of consensus—are all Sancho. They can see that things are breaking. They can tell us that inflation is real, that healthcare is unaffordable, that trust is eroding. But they cannot name the giant because they do not believe in giants. They have been trained to see only windmills.

And so we are left in a strange position: Quixote attacks the wrong target, and Sancho has no target at all. One sees enemies everywhere. The other sees none.

Neither can act effectively.

Section 4: The Giant is Not a Windmill

So what is the giant?

The giant is a logic. In Quixote's Spain, that logic was already visible: imperial grandeur hollowing into debt, decline mistaken for a string of unfortunate events.

It is the belief that society is not something we build together, but something we take from. It is the belief that power should flow upward, that wealth is something you extract, and that the purpose of a nation is to create conditions for a few people to become as powerful as possible while everyone else fights over scraps.

The giant is the Windfall.

And the Windfall does not look like a villain. It looks like an opportunity. It looks like a stock tip, a real estate boom, a tax break, a deregulation that "frees up the market." It tells you that the only way to survive is to position yourself correctly when the next disaster strikes, so you can grab what falls.

But here is the trick: the Windfall does not arrive by accident. It is created. When public systems are dismantled, when collective structures are privatized, when the machines we built together are sold off piece by piece, that is not a series of mistakes. That is a strategy.

The windmill is being turned into rubble so that someone can sell you a piece of it and call it a windfall.

Section 5: The Only Answer

We are reaching a threshold. The "Windfall" mindset has become so aggressive that it is no longer just taking our money—it is taking our sense of belonging. It wants a world where you don't own your shelter, your health, your access, or your future. Where everything that once came through membership must return through payment.

The choice isn't between two political parties. It is a choice between two ways of existing: Are we going to be the people who build the machines that sustain us? Or are we going to be the people left standing in the wind, watching everything we built be carried away?

We must choose the Windmill. We must choose to be builders again. Because if we don't build the structures that catch the wind, we are eventually left with nothing but the storm.

The only answer to a windfall is a windmill.

Build.

Note: The concepts of the Windmill and the Windfall are part of a larger philosophical framework called Manifestinction, which explores how consciousness and collective choice shape our reality. For those interested in the deeper story behind these ideas, you can find more information at Manifestinction.com.