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In many organizations, institutions, churches, businesses, and schools there forms somehow and in some way what C.S. Lewis brilliantly described as the “Inner Ring.” One may reasonably claim every organization has an Inner Ring, that the Inner Ring is inevitable because of the hierarchy and leadership structure.

Photo by Dylan Gillis on Unsplash

Lewis’s concern was for graduates of King’s College London (1944) and how much a desire to be in the Inner Ring would dominate life for them. His words are timeless and my rereading of this classic essay in his The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses prompted me to riff on his piercing insights into the human and social condition.

First, the Inner Ring itself. Those insiders are in the know, they are superior in some sense than the rest, their insider status gives them power and that power is propped up by the secrecy of being in the know. Its essence is exclusion of others and, hence, the Inner Ring shapes a narrative that is divisive. Loyalty to the Inner Ring is unavoidable and disloyalty impermissible. The Inner Ring’s leader shapes the Inner Ring’s culture.

Second, the Inner Ring, and this is Lewis’s deepest theme, corrupts a person’s character because for Lewis the Inner Ring is not the heart of a tov society or group. An insecurity of various sorts rules the roost. The rooster here, to switch images, retains power with loyal “flying monkeys” who do the job to which they’re assigned. Most of those in the Inner Ring, perhaps even more than “most,” can with pain and minimal effort recall something they’ve said or done that floods them with regret and shame. Their words and actions were shaped by the Inner Ring and its leader. They were compromised by the Inner Ring.

Third, the Inner Ring and its leader have the capacity – something Lewis does not describe – to create desire, which can be called envy, to enter into the Inner Ring, to provide a temporary pleasure for being on the inside, and to form a dread of exclusion or removal. Lewis thinks the desire to enter into the Inner Ring somewhere is a “dominant” drive for many. People want to be “in on the action” or “in the room where it happens” – that is, they move to Manhattan or Atlanta or Nashville or LA or Denver or Portland or Grand Rapids or Wheaton – because the Inner Rings are there.

Lewis contended with his audience that day to realize how corrupting the Inner Ring can be, how small the small steps actually were that led to the first levels of corruption, and he wanted them to know that a life shaped by the Inner Ring is both insatiable and unsatisfying. No “Inner Ringer” finds happiness.

The solution, which Lewis didn’t say this way, was to dwell in a Pocket of Tov, a circle of folks with good desires, good character, and who do their work for the joy that work brings. He called it “friendship” in the senses taught by Aristotle,.

“The quest for the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it.”

Thank you C.S. Lewis.

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