This video speaks to the sense of passivity that Garvey warned us about. He called it “laziness.” A trained habit of surrender. Of waiting and letting others think and decide for us. That creeping belief that our effort will not matter until resignation starts to feel normal. When Garvey said, “You have been so darned lazy, that you’ve allowed the other fellow to run away with the whole world,” he was naming a danger, not insulting our spirit. The psychologist Martin Seligman later referred to it as “learned helplessness.” I wrote about this in my first novel, “Benjamin, My Son” (2003), because I saw how many young men in my generation were accepting defeat one quiet lesson at a time.
But here is a cruel truth. No government wants a woke populace. Not the media version of “woke,” but awake. Thinking. Capable of challenging power. Governments prefer people who doubt themselves, because doubt keeps order. You keep a society passive by convincing it that nothing can change, or that only the chosen few can create change. A messiah complex. That is the vicious circle. Power trains helplessness; helplessness protects power.
We break it by refusing to wait. By teaching our children to trust their minds. By remembering that thought is action. And by practicing freedom daily, not just dreaming about it.
Note: This video was inspired by a post by Jon Jon Wesolowski on October 10 on Substack.
