whYNOT

Do Objectivists need leadership? I don't see the necessity. The Institutions do best with what they are good at, the usually excellent lectures, books, etc.. Anyone's opinion piece clearly marked as personal opinion, is of course fine. I'd prefer they leave the practical applications up to the individuals concerned.

To your conclusion - I trust so. Eventually. P-M, that rather indeterminate and highly subjectivist theory, as anyone can hear already (and Hicks confirms), necessarily brings with it a political ideology to force its implementation, Marxism, which will not be so quickly dispatched. Right now, the social effects I can regularly see, read of and can imagine by CRT and CGT are disturbing to witness. The relations strained between generally amicable race, and other 'groups', the control of younger minds also, and psychological elimination of honest dissent. This sacrifice of tribes by tribe

And while the ARI scholars have been blathering on about "a religious tribal mentality", and the cancel culture happening on "both sides of the aisle" [huh, say what?] -- CRT, in the destructive form of Leftist, racist, collectivist and Marxist indoctrination - and the coming education and government policy - AND a policy in business corporations and private companies - has been taking off in the USA, soon, naturally, to be imitated and implemented in many other places. Did they pay any attention to Hicks on postmodernism? Interview him, cite his book? Conceptually anticipate the ominous

I misspoke, your are correct - I should have said out of postmodernism, which you see mentioned below ("...drawing on Marxism and postmodernism"), if this article extolling critical race theory is not just too damn sad to read. CRT is the singular method to *divide* individuals (by race) by paying extra-special attention to race. https://www.thoughtco.com/critical-race-theory-4685094

I brought it up, does it matter?

You could read the article you posted more carefully. He is not only "thinking otherwise", he admits "deconstructionism ... is another name for making trouble". That's "trouble" for trouble's sake. But if you think there's anything healthy in there...or comparable with O'ism. Deconstructionism is meant to develop uncertainties and skepticism in even the word-concepts that our thinking depends upon, I consider a tool in the general spread of postmodernism and the other postmodernists, along with Derrida.

That is a certainty. Objective reality is being destroyed. And too, I've been noting recent-times skepticism of knowledge, a growing anti-conceptualism. Both (postmodernist) attacks were validated by Hicks tracing the pattern from the German to the French p-m philosophers and to America, I found.

Further cancellation: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/08/charles-darwins-theory-natural-selection-justified-white-male/

That's not only more precise, it is much more embracing of the entirety of volition, or preferable I think, "the volitional consciousness". I've never been satisfied with "focus" as the simplistic explanation given. On what? To which ends? It leads to confusion. The choice to focus must clearly go far beyond the senses. I mean, a cat also will ¬focus¬ its attention on a nearby bird. Etc.

Nice tale to highlight the differences. But again, we have to be careful with "choice" and "purpose" when talking about even higher mammals. They are not self-conscious, nor conscious of their relation to existence, therefore are of non-volitional consciousness. The lion has a built-in (innate) instinct to preserve its life - thirst means needing to drink water like the rational animal, conscious men (but, who won't have any automatic instincts in the wilds or in civilization to find it) -and- it will have some degree of "learned behavior" (e.g. where it found water previously) - and- it

Worth reading as a cynical defense of deconstructionism. And it is not meant by Derrida to be DEconstructive the author insists. "Not demolition or destruction". Excerpt: Thinking Otherwise I can already hear the complaints and moans of the skeptics — skeptics like those given voice by the National Review: What’s the point? Why mess with the status quo when everything seems to be working just fine? Or perhaps even more critical: Isn’t this kind of mental gymnastics just an exercise in navel contemplation reserved for privileged elites? This last item is less a question and

Deconstructionism you mean? It is daily that we see another book being 'canceled' by the literary or historical 'revisionists'.

The other buzzword was "political correctness" also heard less today. The two phrases now seem like soft entrees to postmodernism, proper.

Right - it doesn't "know" its purpose. Which indicates it doesn't *have* a "purpose" -(by definition). An important footnote in VoS explains better than I have: "When applied to physical phenomena, such as the automatic functions of a an organism, the term 'goal directed' is not to be taken as 'purposive' - a concept applicable only to the actions of a consciousness... I use the term [for] actions whose nature is such that they RESULT in the preservation of an organism's life".

Animals live in the moment, they must do so by their nature. Its stomach filled and a shelter for now meets all its needs. A human knows there will be a tomorrow, he can conceive of many tomorrows, his needs are projected for long term food and shelter. What appears as human, "goal-directed action" by an animal shouldn't be construed as the purposive, conscious action as we know it. For that, men have and need a volitional consciousness, animals don't.