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The discovery

While I was searching my bookshelf last Friday for a missing book, a several-page print out literally fell into my hands.  I have no idea where it came from. I have no memory of ever having seen it before. 

 It is a copy of “The Inner Ring” by C.S. Lewis, the same man who wrote “Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”  But this article was neither child’s play nor fantasy.

Rather, the author gives a possible explanation for the serious “game” being played out today in Washington DC— by legislators of both political parties.

 Ten Observations by C.S. Lewis

• “…in all men’s lives… one of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local Ring and the terror of being left outside…

• Unless you take measures to prevent it, this desire is going to be one of the chief motives of your life, from the moment you enter your profession until you are too old to care… 

• if you are drawn in.. you cannot bear to… be thrust back again into the cold outer world. It would be so terrible to. ..know that you had been tried for the Inner Ring and rejected…

• And then…next week it will be something a little further from the rules, and next year something further still…

• 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.

• Until you conquer the fear of being an outsider, an outsider you will remain…

• 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 the other sound craftsmen will know it.”

• This group of craftsmen…will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public…

• But it will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys…

The above points are excerpted from a Memorial Lecture given by Lewis in 1944 (!) at King’s College, University of London. At the time, Lewis was about 46 years old and a professor at Cambridge University. 

Consider: Does what he said then speak to who/where we find ourselves today?

If you think a Congressperson or Senator of whichever political party might benefit from considering what price he/she is willing to pay to belong to “The Inner Ring”—please copy and send to him/her.  And please consider sharing.