Itt-Ott, 1973 (6. évfolyam, 1-6. szám)
1973 / 1. szám
to-one relationship; secondly, that the effectiveness of any unit is dispersed as it moves away from the one-to-one relationship. In other words, the effectiveness of an organization is increased in direct proportion to its ability to limit the circle of its community. As soon as it needs to increase and extend its lines of communication, to take one factor, or as soon as the circle is extended to involve more individuals, to take another factor, then, on the basis of our assumption, the effectiveness of the organization will tend to disperse. I realize that these assumptions do not operate in a vacuum and that there are untold numbers of factors and input operating in the situation I have tried to freeze for a moment so that we could use it as a tool. These two poles and the distance between them that I refer to--the one-to-one relationship--has been part of the American historical scene since Colonial days and it has provided the narrative for many a crisis in institutional life. We find organization after organization and movement after movement that splinters, withers, or achieves a phenomenally increased circle and then concepts such as these begin to be used by members of the organization: rediscovery, recovery, heritage, back to the roots and origins, back to the natural state, the search for identity, the individual and his needs, his nobility. I believe that today we find ourselves in a "back to", in a rediscovery, recovery oeriod in America as far as I am able to judge, especially when I view the American Hungarian circle or community, This search for identity does not pervade the entire circle, only a part of it, and it is that part that needs to be defined, must be located, so that that portion of the circle may be linked—if possible—to an institutional conveyer of the cultural heritage. Of course, the "back to" portion of the circle may unilaterally reject the linking to an institutional conveyer, or vice versa, or there may be mutual rejection. This process of unilateral rejection, or perhaps we should think of it from the subjective point of the "rediscoverer": he often feels there is little likelihood of finding what he has "rediscovered" anywhere else but where—or the way and the manner in which—he rediscovered it. Therefore there is little inclination on his part to link up with any institutional conveyer of culture, because according to the "back to" unit, the "pure form" or the recovered form of the culture is now "encircled" within that portion of the community circle where the recoverers find themselves. It is upon this premise that this portion of the larger circle operates and behaves. During this same period of rediscovery, I believe there also occurs a "pancaking" or piling-up of organizations almost on top of one another, in close proximity to one another, each motivated from the impetus of recovery, each initiated and organized to fulfill the specific needs and requirements of that portion of the circle where they find themselves. As this process of pancaking takes place on much the same territory or area of the larger circle, layer upon layer of similar and like organizations begin to smother and destroy the ecology of the area. A newly developed, created natural environment now becomes overpopulated from above through a "pancaking" that saps the ecological reserves found in the area. In this "pancaking" process the circle of the oancake also is extended laterally to encircle an ever wider area, in the certain notion that the recovered cultural 33
