To begin with Don Quijote is hidalgo. If you ask dictionary hidalgo will be translated as gentlemen or lower member of nobility. That too falls short of this word actual meaning. Hidalgo is someone of noble origin, but who does not have a noble title.
Unless you are from eastern Europe, where whole family shares the same title, status and coat of arms, titles of nobility are very limited commodity. There are but finite number of peers with substantial titles and associated land, right, privileges and so on. New ducal level titles may be created for royal offsprings, but for lower nobility there is no such luxury. Thus, if a baron has 2 or more sons, only one of them will be able to inherit his baronial title, lands, rights and privileges. The extra sons will go without. It's for these extra sons, term gentleman or hidalgo in Spanish was originally used.
Such gentlemen thus exist in a strange limbo between lords themselves who actually have land, money and authority and peasants who serve these lords. Since gentlemen are of noble blood, they cannot be treated like any other peasant, they have certain rights and privileges, courtesy of their noble birth. On the other hand, they have no real authority, money or status either.
Lords manage the land they own, protect those who live on it and make sure the manorial society they are in charge of is functioning smoothly. Peasants work for the lords but get paid and fed in return. Gentlemen on the other hand has no role in particular. A spare in 'an heir and a spare' phrase they just idling around, waiting for their time to step in as a substitute lord, should their older brother die, that in most cases never happens. It's no wonder one may grow mad from such conditions.
The book is fundamentally about one such gentlemen who grew old without a chance to actually become a lord. Tired of waiting he started playing out his lordly function in his delusions. He recruited a servant and went on to fight imaginary enemies. Even La Mancha part of the title is very on point, while such region does exist in Spain, the real reason it is used to emphasize Don Quijote's lack of lands. You can roughly translate his full tile as Lord Quijote of Nothingness, the actual meaning of the title.
The book depicts not a madman but a person who could never be what he was meant to be. People of noble origins were not meant to be peasants. Peasants have different mentality, that is why the serve lords. Lords do not serve, they rule. Gentlemen, who are of the same blood as lords, rule too.
So how does any of that applies to our generation you ask. Plain and simple, our parents pushed us to study hard, go to uni, get degree, promising upper-class life, the graduate job affords. It was only after graduation that we had to face reality that all the graduate jobs are already taken by other graduates and if any suddenly becomes available, then the whole alumni of several years prior in addition to your peers, apply for it at the same time. In a reality like this it's no wonder there are a lot of graduates are left without any jobs at all.
Thus, we wonder the proverbial La Mancha (wilderness) of our familiar internet, fight various enemies and wait for things to change somehow. We are not peasants to work min wage jobs, we have education, as grads we are modern world equivalent of gentlemen or hidalgo.
Back in the days, all these extra gentlemen, who were unable to become lords, gathered in coffee houses, shared ideas and eventually came up with enlightened ideas of liberty and democracy that eventually revolutionised society and created modern life.
Our current situation of many grads, who are unable to lead middle class life we were promised and gathering on the interned to discuss new revolutionary ideas like UBI and more, too will lead towards new revolutionary change that is long overdue in our modern 21st century society.
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