The Ring of Power
By Max on Jun 5, 2009 in Featured, Lewis Commentary
I often come away from having read a piece of Lewisian prose feeling refreshed. Usually, the epithets found in the one-liner recommendations on the back cover of almost every book these days lingers in my mind: simply brilliant; deliciously illuminating; clear, witty, and uncomprimisingly concise. The difference, of course, is that the descriptions applied to Lewis’s writing are actually true. As my wife said this morning after yet another one of my sighs of delight, it is just “standard Lewisian fare.” This morning’s portion also happened to be convicting.
It was a brief address Lewis gave to the student body at King’s College, University of London, in 1944. In it, he bypasses the Flesh and the Devil to focus on the third member of the deadly trio: the World. And within that sector he zeroes in on a phenomenon which he considers to be the “most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things” [1]. It is the phenomenon of the “Inner Ring.” If you have read Lewis, you probably already know what it is. If you have not read Lewis, you probably still know what it is. It is that invisible social dynamic which creates an “inside” and an “outside”. The insiders are “in the know”; they refer to themselves as “we”; they are the implicit elite. Sometimes people think they are insiders when they really are not–to the great amusement of those who really are. The outsiders are everyone else.
Here I merely want to observe two important points. First: identification. Lewis tells us that these rings are everywhere. “I can assure you that in whatever hospital, inn of court, diocese, school, business, or college you arrive after going down, you will find the Rings–what Tolstoi calls the second or unwritten systems” [2]. Because such Rings are everywhere, the first step in avoiding their spell is not difficult. We must first “see” the Ring. Or, it may be more accurate to say we must “feel” the Ring, for it is invisible. But there is no mystery here: being on the outside of a Ring is really no different than what small children would quite rightly call, with a tearful voice, being “left out”. We all know what that feels like. (As an aside, I do not say this is a great evil. It is painful, but that does not mean it is therefore a bad thing. The greater evil may lie with the child who has never been left out, for that probably required either always conforming to the status quo, or having the singular power of establishing the status quo.)
Second, I must clarify what I implied in the second paragraph. According to Lewis, Inner Rings are often a practical necessity for the functioning of any social group, and thus not necessarily immoral in their very existence. Some people have to know more than the others in a group; and that alone creates a deeper connection with the few, and a deeper disconnection with everyone else. But they are particular fertile ground for the gratification of very immoral desires, and therein lies the problem. It is not the phenomenon itself which makes “a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things.” The real danger lies in the subtle but powerful desire to be in the Inner Ring. It is that fear of being on the outside, of being viewed as “one of the common heard”; it is the jovial and good-natured invitation by one of the insiders to compromise on a “technicality” (what others may call morality); it is the driving desire to comply, lest that “other man’s face–that genial, confidential, delightfully sophisticated face–turn suddenly cold and contemptuous, to know that you had been tried for the Inner Ring and rejected” [3].
The probable fate of those over whom the Ring has power, believes Lewis, is soundrelism. And the danger lies in its subtlety: “the prophecy I make is this. To nine out of ten of you the choice which could lead to scoundrelism will come, when it does come, in no very dramatic colors” [4]. Which one of us, who has lived long enough to understand the concept of right and wrong, does not know this to be true? Yet, how many of us have stretched moral lines for the sake of getting in the Ring? Hopefully those moral lines have not yet snapped. Hopefully they are beginning to saw their way into our conscience. Hopefully it is still hard to kick against the pricks.
If you haven’t read Lewis’s paper, please do. (See the publication information below.) If you have read his paper, please do what I just did: write a note on your calendar to reread it in 6 months. “Unless you take measures to prevent it, this desire is going to be one of the chief motives of your life, from the first day on which you enter your profession until the day when you are too old to care” [5]. The Inner Ring’s spell is incessant. So ought to be our measures against it.
Notes:
Post a Comment