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

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 of 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 124

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 a nd the growth of Professionalism, so much so, that °ne expert has claimed "an industrialising society is a 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. 2 - 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 0 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 a Pal letter published on the eightieth anniversary of Jtorum Novarum puts the problem in this context, 111 this world dominated by scientific and techno-