The Gazette 1975

Federation of Professional Associations

TEXT OF PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS TO THE ANNUAL

GENERAL MEETING OF THE FEDERATION

Held at 22 Clyde Road, Dublin 4, on Thursday, 24th April, 1975.

By Outgoing President, FRANKLIN O'SULLIVAN, LL.B., Solicitor

1 • The close of the twentieth century:

As we enter over the last quarter of the Twentieth

Century a large question looms over the nature of

the progress claimed by mankind.

The Industrial Revolution has resulted in an

unprecedented increase in the number of Professionals

nd the growth of Professionalism, so much so, that

°ne expert has claimed "an industrialising society is

Professionalising society". To this extent the

Professions are at once the beneficiaries and the

creators of the increasing level of education and

expertise now manifest in man's evolutionary develop-

ment. The surprising aspect of our economic growth

since the opening of the Century is not its radical

change but the fact that its towering economic

achievements are the direct product of the founda-

tions laid by the Victorian and Edwardian generations.

The preceding three-quarters of this century, in

economic terms, has been an age of continuity but

the future, states Peter Drucker "the one thing

that is certain so far, is that it will be a period of

phange — in technology and in economic policy, in

industrial structures and in economic theory, in the

knowledge needed to govern and to manage, and in

economic issues.

- The hidden pitfalls:

The destructive power of the atomic bomb, the

Permanent menace to our material environment from

Pollution and refuse, and social illness of "Future

Shock" emerging from the roaring torrent of change

have now entered are seen and understood as

obvious diminishments of the great scientific and

technological

progress of our era. Faith, however, in

t h

e scientific ability to overcome these perils springs

ete

rnal and we continue on our hopeful way.

But what of those dangers that are not so easily

Recognised? Indeed they are not recognisable because

l n

scientific and technological terms they are not

quantifiable or subject to laboratory observation.

There is available a range of literature dealing with

me hidden and non-quantifiable pitfalls in our age

Progress but the message appears to have been

ignored, for all practical purposes. Its 'Authors range

tiom

drop-out

hippies,

new-Left

Philosophers,

"tough a number of managerial and communication

®*Perts, to the head of the Catholic Church. The

Pal letter published on the eightieth anniversary of

Jtorum Novarum puts the problem in this context,

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this world dominated by scientific and techno-

logical change, which threatens to drag it towards a

new positivism, a new more fundamental doubt is

raised. Having subdued nature by using his reason,

man now finds that he himself is as it were,

imprisoned within his own rationality; he in turn

becomes the object of science".

The popular works of Vance Packard have made

the public in general aware of the hidden power of

the persuaders in the communications media and the

waste makers in the multi-National Corporations.

But not all of us are aware of the seductive totali-

tarian threat to mans' freedom and his conscience

which the present consumer society contains. This is

spelt out in a small but difficult work entitled "One

Dimensional Man" by Herbert Marcuse and may be

gleaned from the following quotation; "In this

(industrial) society the productive apparatus tends

to become totalitarian to the extent to which it

determines not only the socially needed occupations,

skills and attitudes, but also individual needs and

aspirations. It thus obliterates the opposition between

the private and public existence, between individual

and social needs". Later he adds in terms that any

Christian can understand; "The extent to which this

civilisation transforms the object world into an

extension of man's mind and the body makes the very

notion

alienation

questionable.

The

people

recognise themselves in their commodities; they find

their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level

home, kitchen equipment. The very mechanism which

ties the individual to his society has changed and

social control is anchored in the new needs which it

has produced".

In effect the zone of man's inner freedom has been

invaded and whittled down by the technological

reality and the pleasure-seeking no-exit world of

Sartre is upon us.

3. The failure of traditional institutions:

The immediate reflex response to the foregoing is to

say that it exaggerates and that in any event religion

will take care of man's inner freedom and conscience.

But will it? Already we speak of religionless

Christianity and the "Grave of God". It is not too

daring to say that everywhere there is disenchant-

ment with the contradictions in the religious message

and there is revolt against all 'power concentrations'

whether secular or religious. There is disenchantment

with Government and there is revolt within the

traditional

institutions,

including

the

Catholic

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