Dangers and Exceptions of the Inner Ring

Reading: The Inner Ring, C. S. Lewis

Perhaps badly introduced, Lewis' essay on Inner Rings is, as always, a rather insightful look at the unwritten hierarchies of human society. Human beings have an incurable desire to belong somehow, somewhere. It's simply how we are. Whether it is in a high school clique or a specific club, we are constantly looking to be accepted. While Lewis has addressed this feeling, this desire to be accepted, in this essay he focuses more on the danger of the Inner Ring itself.

First, there's the idea of the Inner Ring itself. We desire so much to be a part of a particular group that we don't consider the costs of being in such a group. The criteria begins at a low point, then begins to rise and rise, until wither one notices and withdraws (an unlikely result), or one hits a breaking point (the much more likely result): "And then, if you are drawn in, next week it will be something a little further from the rules, and next year something further still . . . it may end in a crash, a scandal, a penal servitude; it may end in millions, a peerage and giving the prizes at your old school. But you will be a scoundrel." One gets sucked into such a group, and everything is required of him.

But, once one has gained entrance into the Inner Ring, it becomes a different group entirely. Nothing, really, has been achieved, and nothing really satisfies that longing to belong. And so, instead of recognizing that nothing will change, we take power and pride onto ourselves and claim that, because we have fought so bravely and persevered for so long and finally achieved the Inner Ring, we now hold the authority to judge whether others might join. "Exclusion is no accident; it is the essence," writes Lewis; the Ring has now instead of being merely a group with criteria to your group with your criteria. Because it was so very difficult for you, you feel it ought to be just as difficult for everyone, anyone else.

How dangerous! What pride! It is a frightening thought that we think so highly of ourselves. It's easy to blame everyone else, of course. "Judge not, lest ye be judged," has been reversed; it becomes, "I have been judged; therefore, let me judge."

We must take care, then. "The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it." And yet, there is an interesting result and a clarification that follows. "If in you working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters." Lose yourself in your work with no intentions but to finish your work to the best of your ability, without attempting to please anyone, or to get ahead, and it will be respected. "And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will find again that you have come unawares to a real inside." This, however, is different than a usual Inner Ring, although it appears like one; "The secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led tither by the lure of the esoteric." In order to drive his point home, Lewis puts it into even simpler terms: "This is friendship . . . it causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ring can ever have it."