Thursday, January 20, 2011

The Inner Ring

An Inner Ring can be described in modern terms as cliques.  It is a group of people that is exclusive. Lewis describes a "genuine Inner Ring" as a group where "exclusion is no accident; it is the essence."  He says Rings are inevitable but one should not desire to strive to get into a Ring just to get in, "to be in the know".  "One of the most dominant elements [of life] is the desire to be inside the local Ring and the terror of being left outside."  Because of this desire and fear, "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."  Lewis argues that we should cast the desire to be "in" because we will never be fulfilled by it:  "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.... But if all you want to be is in the know, your pleasure will be short lived.  The circle cannot have from within the charm it had from outside.  By the very act of admitting you it has lost its magic....The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it." 

If you ignore the desire and pursuit of the Inner Ring in the workplace and just work your hardest, you gain respect for being a good worker and enjoy the work, which will transcend the rings that exist in the workplace.   If  you spend time with people you like, doing things you enjoy, "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."

I found this essay to be extremely applicable and convicting because I am sometimes caught up in desiring an Inner Ring without realizing it.  I too often think of what people would think of me if I do a certain thing, if I expressed interest in a certain activity, instead of just being myself.  A bad result of caring excessively about what others think is sometimes I question who I really am.  What do I really enjoy?  Who is the real me?  Or are they both a part of me, just like everyone else has different aspects of their personality?  What perception do I have by being with this group, by belonging to this department, by having this major?  In class, we talked about how the element of pride plays a huge part in our pursuit of the Inner Ring.  But if we get over the desire for the Inner Ring, get over our pride, you enjoy life instead of constantly pursuing something you cannot attain.  I kind of thought of it as a hamster running on the wheel. 

An example Lewis gives is a man who does overtime at work and makes it seem like it is important when "it is a terrible bore.... It is tiring and unhealthy to lose your Saturday afternoons: but to have them because you don't matter, that is much worse."  This makes me think of Letter XII of The Screwtape Letters where Screwtape describes his ability to make a man waste his life away doing Nothing.  Am I wasting my time doing stuff I don't like just to be in?  Granted, you cannot do what you want all the time, but is your desire driving your actions? 

Everyone wants to belong, to feel loved but in the end, if you want to belong just to belong, you end up with nothing.  This seems almost ironic, that when you go after it you can never get it but if you don't, you find it along the way.  From my experience thus far, it seems that the deliberate exclusiveness is more prevalent in high school than college.  In high school, we seemed to constantly worry about having friends around us, categorizing people, and keeping them out.  At college, I experienced for the first time the freedom people had to be themselves.  Yes, there are Inner Rings, but they are the formations of good friendships and a true intimacy, a delight in one another, and not thinking about "us" and "them".

I would argue with Lewis that one should desire to be in the Inner Ring consisting Christ-followers.  They should want the freedom, the joy, the love, the relationship we have in Christ, which is evidenced in our lives.  While we should not be living out our lives for others to see but for God alone, we still have to be aware of how people perceive some of our actions, especially across cultures, like we discussed in The Poison of Subjectivism.

Professor Ribeiro asked a good question:  Do you feel like an insider or an outsider here at Calvin?  The same question could be applied to everyone.  In your workplace, at school, in society, in your family even, are you in or out?  And are you okay with your position?

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