The Inner Ring (1944)
It's a really poignant piece, and I think having a strong grip on its ideas is the hallmark of a transition to a socially-constructive adulthood.
For me, personally, it was quite depressing & disillusioning to recognize that there is no "inner ring" where the people populating it are magically "better" (more rational, of stronger character, whatever) than the people outside, and that in fact "innerness" is more often inversely correlated with those qualities.
It took me a while to fully digest, value and live by the last paragraph of the essay, the call-to-action to become a crafts person invested in your "society" of like-minded friends, which, I think, is as important as the rest of the essay insofar as it provides a path forward.
I think C.S. Lewis is right in a lot of this. How much of ourselves do we give up in pursuit of being "in the circle", "in the know", "with those important folks"?
He extends this philosophy in science-fiction/novel form in _That Hideous Strength_[1].
This article is very true.
But most of the article is taken up with the dangers of trying to get in an inner circle. It's easy to miss thinking about the equally true last paragraphs.
> The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your 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. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it. This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. It will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public: nor will it lead to those periodic scandals and crises which the Inner Ring produces. But it will do those things which that profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain.
> And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside: that you are indeed snug and safe at the centre of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring. But the difference is that the secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric: for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ring can ever have it.
> The association between him and me in the public mind has already gone quite as deep as I wish
Perhaps he is talking about The Screwtape Letters[0]? I find that book to be awesome stuff. It is definitely Christian moralism, which I could do without, but it is mainly guidance on basic self-appraisal; regardless of the religious (or non-religious) context.
Related:
The Inner Ring – CS Lewis - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34331775 - Jan 2023 (2 comments)
The Inner Ring - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24894627 - Oct 2020 (1 comment)
The Inner Ring (1944) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20259862 - June 2019 (2 comments)
The Inner Ring (1944) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13144201 - Dec 2016 (13 comments)
The Inner Ring (1944) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8930434 - Jan 2015 (6 comments)
Anyone have particulars to share in which they've either longed for or belonged to an Inner Ring? Observed the effects of it? Decided to leave? Decided to stay?
Meta-question: I'm curious about why and when this piece by C.S. Lewis first got noticed in HN circles. I expect there are some interesting connections.
It’s wonderfully ironic that he began with a passage from War and Peace since Russia is full, at so many levels, of the longing of which he speaks, both the Russia contemporary to Tolstoy and today, where they invaded a country in hopes of being recognized as a nation in the “inner ring”.
I am trying to figure why I have a problem relating?
Maybe I am just wired in the wrong way.
But maybe it is only after the "we" that you figure out what you really like doing? And the more "we" the more things you will find?
Some times you just have to make a move to get somewhere - anywhere.
It is difficult just finding things you love out of a vacuum.
"the tyranny of structurelessness" is a good companion piece to this: https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm
The characters Peter Keating and Howard Roark in Rand's The Fountainhead were portrayals of this theme. Although both architects, Keating is the inner ringer, while Roark is the outsider craftsman.
I read this, and also Letter From a Birmingham Jail[0], at least once a year. Thanks for the reminder!
Inner ring was a good read and very thought provoking
when a so-called flat-org/holacracy company says “you don’t have a boss” what they actually mean is you have an indeterminate # of bosses you just don’t who they are yet
As Marx once put it...
"I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member."
Robert Sapolsky’s book “A Primate’s Memoir” is about the importance of status in baboon tribes. High status males and females are more successful at reproducing, healthier, and have lower levels of stress hormones. That said, some individuals have found alternative strategies that also work. After reading that book, I’ve never been able to take status games among humans so seriously.
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