Thanks to a former student who recently gave me C.S. Lewis' The Weight of Glory, I just read his essay "The Inner Ring." How I wish I would have read this when he gave it to me and before I finished teaching "Political Leadership" this spring.
Originally written as an address to college students, it is a timeless warning against the very natural inclination to be "in." We too often dismiss such warnings as those appropriately aimed only at teens warning them of peer pressure and dangerous cliques. But Lewis does a profound job of explaining how this drive to be part of "the inner ring" consumes the lives of many adults--and perhaps this writer (me) and this reader (you) particularly so.
Every community, every business, every school, club, association, and family has its "inner ring." Those outside desperately want to be inside. Those inside desperately want to hold their positions inside the invisible line and many want to insure it is difficult for those outside to cross that boundary and share the glory. As Lewis points out, these "inside groups" are more important to many of us than money or fame or power. It is the deep psychological satisfaction of being one of the "insiders" that drives us to work on Saturday mornings or stay up late posting a blog or standing for election. This is the "delicious sense of secret intimacy," we crave to taste. Lewis asks his audience if any of them have done something to achieve membership in an inner ring that they have later found weighing on their conscience's late at night. I ask the same of my readers.
This drive and these rings are inevitable, Lewis points out. But just because they are inevitable does not mean we should not gird ourselves against them. How might we protect ourselves?
First, by knowing of their existence and the human drive to be inside them, questioning ourselves about our motives. Second, to be on guard against the subtle way these "ins" can corrupt those who want "in." "Its OK, its how we do things around here." "Oh, don't be a prude." "Those rules don't apply to us." Third, in your own work, do it for the good of the work itself and what it will produce--"make the work your end," rather than a means to the inner ring. (Doing a good job is a great way, I say parenthetically, to also gain entrance into an inner circle that values the virtue of hard work and the good of craftsmanship.) And, finally, in your spare time consort with people simply because you like them and you will feel "snug and safe at the centre of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring." But, this is friendship, which Aristotle places among the virtues and which Lewis says "causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ringer can ever have it."
I wonder how much of our lives are really consumed by such a drive? How many of the positions we have held, how many of the offices we have run for, how much of the time we spend with people, the extra work done on a weekend away from family, joining the fraternity, running for student government, joining a scholarship program, rumor mongering, selling out a friend . . . have been driven by this desire to be in an Inner Ring?
As Lewis points out, once you are in the Inner Ring, you inevitably discover you are still outside a yet smaller and more elite ring which you simply must gain access to. And so down through concentric circles we chase the dream that can never be grasped. We chase a day of happiness and contentment that can never be found in that direction.
Hence Lewis' final warning to us all: "The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it."
Originally written as an address to college students, it is a timeless warning against the very natural inclination to be "in." We too often dismiss such warnings as those appropriately aimed only at teens warning them of peer pressure and dangerous cliques. But Lewis does a profound job of explaining how this drive to be part of "the inner ring" consumes the lives of many adults--and perhaps this writer (me) and this reader (you) particularly so.
Every community, every business, every school, club, association, and family has its "inner ring." Those outside desperately want to be inside. Those inside desperately want to hold their positions inside the invisible line and many want to insure it is difficult for those outside to cross that boundary and share the glory. As Lewis points out, these "inside groups" are more important to many of us than money or fame or power. It is the deep psychological satisfaction of being one of the "insiders" that drives us to work on Saturday mornings or stay up late posting a blog or standing for election. This is the "delicious sense of secret intimacy," we crave to taste. Lewis asks his audience if any of them have done something to achieve membership in an inner ring that they have later found weighing on their conscience's late at night. I ask the same of my readers.
This drive and these rings are inevitable, Lewis points out. But just because they are inevitable does not mean we should not gird ourselves against them. How might we protect ourselves?
First, by knowing of their existence and the human drive to be inside them, questioning ourselves about our motives. Second, to be on guard against the subtle way these "ins" can corrupt those who want "in." "Its OK, its how we do things around here." "Oh, don't be a prude." "Those rules don't apply to us." Third, in your own work, do it for the good of the work itself and what it will produce--"make the work your end," rather than a means to the inner ring. (Doing a good job is a great way, I say parenthetically, to also gain entrance into an inner circle that values the virtue of hard work and the good of craftsmanship.) And, finally, in your spare time consort with people simply because you like them and you will feel "snug and safe at the centre of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring." But, this is friendship, which Aristotle places among the virtues and which Lewis says "causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ringer can ever have it."
I wonder how much of our lives are really consumed by such a drive? How many of the positions we have held, how many of the offices we have run for, how much of the time we spend with people, the extra work done on a weekend away from family, joining the fraternity, running for student government, joining a scholarship program, rumor mongering, selling out a friend . . . have been driven by this desire to be in an Inner Ring?
As Lewis points out, once you are in the Inner Ring, you inevitably discover you are still outside a yet smaller and more elite ring which you simply must gain access to. And so down through concentric circles we chase the dream that can never be grasped. We chase a day of happiness and contentment that can never be found in that direction.
Hence Lewis' final warning to us all: "The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it."