What color is your windmill? (mysteri infected me with the "Quixotic Meme")

[capri0mni]

mysteri was infected by neonnurse who was infected by supergee.

There is a site on the net called The mood of LiveJournal, which records the percentages of different moods people are recording, as they post their entries. I'm looking at the site now, and as I type this, "Amused" is coming in first, and "Tired" second (One group with too much caffeine, and one with not enough, perhaps?).

Exactly one month ago, disc_sophist put out a call for everyone to label every post "quixotic" for the next 24 hours... All well and good... but does it mean anything if people say their feeling quixotic when they are not?

So I now set forth on an even on an even more daunting quest: to change the mood of LiveJournal in spirit as not just in name.

This leads to a small pet peeve of mine. Whoever came up with the hierarchical system of LJ's mood icons catagorized "quixotic" under "silly", so that, unless you make a special icon especially for it, some version of a goofy face appears whenever you pick it as a mood.

Feeling quixotic is not silly! The word comes from the title character of Don Quixote de la Mancha (completed in 1605) -- an aging contry squire with failing eyesight who has read one (or ten) too many chivalic romances, and he sees every windmill as a menacing giant, and goes out to attack them, with his squire and friend Sancho Panza by his side.

...Well, okay, maybe that appears silly to the cynics among us. "The windmills are not really giants," they tell us. "And even if they were, one man with a dented pot for a helmet and a knock-kneed horse for a mount couldn't fight back against them and actually win."

But on a metaphoric level, those windmills can be seen as representations of the emerging industrial revolution, dominating the social landscape and replacing the ideals of honor and honesty with the drive for profit.

"Well," say those same proverbial cynics, "it's still silly for one person to think they can fight back against something so big as industry, or city hall, or any of 'The Powers That Be.'"

And to that, I answer: "But one person can fight back against the evils of the world, no matter how big those evils seem, and believing so is not silly -- it's downright noble!"

Where would we be today if Martin Luther hadn't been quixotic enough to post his 95 theses to that church door? Okay -- so some may argue that we'd be in a better place -- that the strife that arose from that act was too high a price to pay. Nonetheless, the world is very different from what it was in 1517 -- in a large part, because of one man's "impossible dream."

Where would we if Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin hadn't been quixotic enough to write Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1797? Or if Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony had not been quixotic enough to take up the cause and found the National American Suffrage Association in 1848?

Where would we be if this small band of activists hadn't set out from Vancouver to protest the test of a nuclear bomb near Amchitka, Alaska in 1971?


So I say to you: Go ahead and put "Quixotic" down as your mood. But as you do so, please take a moment to consider the windmills you'd like to take a whack at, and remember: it may be a long, hard struggle, but that does not mean your dream is impossible... not by a long shot! And it certainly is not silly!

I have several windmills I'd like to tilt. One pertinent to my online life is the cultural phenomenon of nasty trolling.

I want the idea of pro-fun, joyful trolling to become such a strong trend that it has to be included in The Jargon File.

... that, and moving "quixotic" out of the "Silly" catagory of LJ moods. :-)

Comments

[flarnloop.livejournal.com]

Hum! Personally I never knew what quixotic meant, so I simply stayed away from it. Don Quixote, eh? I had no idea.. *feels educated*

(The fact that "bored" scored so highly in that LJ mood measuring thing annoys me a bit, for it people used their brains and spirit more they would not be bored! People that constantly say "I'm bored" drives me insane.. not that people can't be bored, but the fact that they're always bored, seemingly never using their minds to do anything useful, makes me annoyed that they would come to me when they're bored. I have a mind, I have spirit, so I have things to do!! :P ..um, I meant to say, "cool link".. :) )

- "Talia"

you're probably in good company

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Hum! Personally I never knew what quixotic meant, so I simply stayed away from it. Don Quixote, eh? I had no idea.. *feels educated*

Otherwise, it wouldn't be under "silly" -- but maybe "hopeful" instead...

[alryssa.livejournal.com]

You'd like my "Quixotic" mood icon, I think. I shall use it on my next post!

I've seen it

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

And I do like!! A lot!