"The Inner Ring"

Ever read “The Inner Ring”, by CS Lewis? It was published in “The Weight Of Glory” and is a commemoration oration given at King’s College, University of London, December 14, 1944.

It is a remarkable essay and speaks to the nature of humans, our innate tribalism, our desire for belonging, our willingness to compromise our values and beliefs to be part of the in-crowd, the hierarchy within a hierarchy. CS Lewis wrote, “Of all the passions, the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things.”

These hierarchies are invisible to some, they remain elusive and baffling. Some of us however, often through a series of unfortunate events, become highly tuned into them. Hypervigilance will teach you to recognize and identify who holds the power quickly. Hypervigilance is simply “an enhanced state of sensory sensitivity accompanied by an exaggerated intensity of behaviors whose purpose is to detect threats.” It’s not a bad superpower to have, if it is not attached to its common inconvenient relatives, anxiety and post traumatic stress disorder. Also, it can be rather exhausting if you do not learn how to turn it off.

The world we live in today is so full of blasted inner rings and people seeking favor there, it is a distressing and chaotic world indeed. It contaminates every aspect of our politics, our popular culture, our media. My spirit longs for simpler times, when there weren’t so many alien lizard overlords or magic wizards behind the curtain pulling puppet strings. I navigate through this maze rather poorly, because rather than seeking inner rings, I am repulsed by them. It’s like trying to do a constant two-step to avoid the doggy poo buried under the leaves on a fall morning. Mind fields I call them.

“Of all the passions, the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things.” People will often do anything to belong, to achieve some desired or perceived status. Especially seductive is the lust that grows when you think you are privy to something else no one else knows, some bit of awareness that the rest of the humans don’t have. It’s a very heady experience to perceive yourself inside the inner sanctum.

Cult leaders, and many politicians even, know this and they are very good at exploiting it. They can take good people and make them do bad things, or at the very least, foolish things. Before you know it, a large group will be following an absolute monster, being so fearful of getting tossed out of the inner sanctum, that they will compromise their very beliefs and values. They can even rationalize atrocities. They will protect, defend, and translate the words and quotes of whomever they perceive to hold the power. “What he really meant is…” are common words to hear from those inside the circle. They never take what is said at face value anymore, in fact they don’t even hear the actual words anymore. They hear what they want to hear.

Those who lead within these inner rings are very good at using rhetorical trickery, so what they said is not quite what they said, not if you were to question them. It is not their fault you misunderstood exactly what they said. They are extremely deceitful and they gaslight their followers constantly. It’s a good ego boost, calling others out for technically not understanding what you said from a purely legalistic stand point, makes you think you’re far more intelligent than you really are.

I am a complete outlier. Such an outlier it would almost be amusing, if it also wasn’t something that sometimes kept me out of the church or away from city council meetings, or outside of any organized groups or clubs at all. Or people in general. It’s also not such a bad thing to be an outlier, I just mention it because I realize so many people aren’t outliers at all.

This post sounds like a really poor after school special on peer pressure or something, but I just wish more people would listen to the warnings and advice that CS Lewis gave us in his essay on “The Inner Ring.”

 
“It is the very mark of a perverse desire that it seeks what is not to be had. The desire to be inside the invisible line illustrates this rule. As long as you are governed by that desire you will never get what you want. You are trying to peel an onion: if you succeed there will be nothing left. Until you conquer the fear of being an outsider, an outsider you will remain.” -CS Lewis