There are those who are in and those who are out. There are those who know and those who are unknowing. There are those who decide and those who follow. There are those who drive the agenda and those who are relegated to being mere observers.
It happens in every realm of society: your profession, your church, your homeowners association, your local arts scene, at the dog-walking park, in government at all levels, and in media, industry, tech, and you name it. There are always and everywhere layers of status that are impossible to hide. Indeed they are put on display before us daily.
This dynamic is pervasive and nearly defines the structure of life itself under every system.
How we respond to this, each of us as individuals, forms the desiderata of daily decision-making for everyone. Navigating the realities of complex circles of influence can make good men great and bad men scoundrels. The complexities and how we answer—how we sort through the layers of the onion—can be a source of joy or misery, meritorious emulation or destructive envy, emphatic enthusiasm for the roil and toil of life or bitter resentment against others.
Lewis had a warning for the students that began with an observation. Every sector of life has an inner ring of knowledge and control from which everyone but a few are excluded. You feel it everywhere you go. There are overt rules of getting along but there are also unstated ways of navigating what’s what. You recognize this immediately. Then you get curious. What do they have that I don’t have? What are the secret codes for crashing their little group and becoming one of them?
It’s that ambition that can compromise you and ultimately wreck you. This was Lewis’s warning. For getting over that—being inspired with ambition toward emulation while avoiding the trap of desperation and the cruelty that can come with social climbing—is a major part of the pith of life itself.
I can think of many examples that I see daily, especially in the world of politics. So many people seem to want position and power. And so many people purport to have access to those things and so manipulate everyone else who wants them. It’s quite the circus but hardly unique to national politics. The same game is played in every aspect of life.
As I was reading Lewis’s essay on this, I took a moment to find examples from my life when I’ve felt excluded with an obvious awareness that there is an inner ring of which I was not part. I kept going back in time through situation after situation.
Finally I hit on a case I can share with you. I was transferred to a new public school in second grade. The first day on the playground I sat on a wall alone and sulked. The second day I played on the swings. The third day I noticed the existence of an in group that was over there playing in the dirt doing something and I did not know what.
I noted that they were playing marbles. There seem to be some leaders. They had special bags to carry their own stash. They were really good and there were victories and defeats all around. Some kids would get others’ marbles while other kids gave up theirs. There were two or three kids who were especially impressive. They had “cats’ eyes” and even the most prized possessions of all, the “steelies.”
I left school that day determined to get some marbles and learn the game. I came back with a small stash I somehow got my parents to buy at the store. The kids were clearly not impressed and I was not very good at the game and lost half on the first go round. Then I was seized with ambition, jealousy, and even fury. I practiced and practiced. Over time, I got good and accumulated some good ones, even some “steelies.”
Then I noted other kids trying to join us, and I did to others what was done to me. Namely, I treated them like outsiders while I was the insider with special knowledge. I had become an insider. But the feeling of joy was fleeting. At that very moment, I experienced the delight that comes with wielding my new social power over others. In time, that became boring and I noticed another group of kids who thought marbles were stupid and that practicing karate moves was more cool.
You see where this is going. I was experiencing in the second grade a version of what the adult world creates in every single sector of life. We were creating little hierarchies of inclusion and exclusion. We go along with this and develop habits of mind and action toward them. Those habits form character, reputation, and become the life template for whether and to what extent we feel satisfaction in life or resentment plus misery.
An obvious example concerns fashion. It’s been a signaling system for inclusion and exclusion since time began. The pettiness of the rules, which are never explained overtly, can be astonishing and precise in application. A case in point concerns real vs. fake luxury goods. No outsider can tell the difference, but a person who wants to be on the inside knows never to take the risk. You must have the real deal and pay a thousand times more for it else face the surreptitious derision of the people you are trying to impress.
What is Lewis’s advice for dealing with this? He has this line about which I had to think very hard: “Until you conquer the fear of being an outsider, an outsider you will remain.”
Explanation: If your fear of being the outsider drives your decisions, all your victories will be temporary. No circle has the charm from the inside that it seems to have from the outside. Once you are in, you discover this truth. Then you discover that there is still another layer from which you are excluded and the whole process starts over again. This goes on forever without end.
Lewis puts it this way: “Once the first novelty is worn off, the members of this circle will be no more interesting than your old friends. Why should they be? You were not looking for virtue or kindness or loyalty or humour or learning or wit or any of the things that can really be enjoyed. You merely wanted to be ‘in.’ And that is a pleasure that cannot last. As soon as your new associates have been staled to you by custom, you will be looking for another Ring.”
He adds: “The rainbow’s end will still be ahead of you. The old ring will now be only the drab background for your endeavor to enter the new one. And you will always find them hard to enter, for a reason you very well know. You yourself, once you are in, want to make it hard for the next entrant, just as those who are already in made it hard for you.”
This is why Lewis says that the answer is to stop fearing being the outsider and simply to discover something you love and do it, ideally with friends. That’s the whole secret. So if you love playing cello, you can sit at the symphony and seethe that you are not in it. You can join the union, practice until your fingers bleed, wait for an opening, try out, and maybe get in. But then you are in the third section, not the second or first, and the whole process begins again.
Here is the core problem. Eventually, cynical climbers who trample on ethics reveal themselves. People weary of them and lose trust. A man can possess lineage, credentials, erudition, class connections, club memberships, and looks. But if he wields them by use of deception, duplicity, and disloyalty, he will eventually be found out. Then he will be hated and bear the brunt of the burning fury that is born of betrayal. And it will follow him all his days.
On the other hand, you could take a different route. You could find friends who like to play and start a quartet that practices in your living room. Maybe you can play for the retirement home. Maybe your group plays for a gathering at the park. See where it goes from there. The entire time you feel joy because you are doing what you want with people you like.
That seems like a better life!
Once you adopt this attitude, you also immunize yourself against manipulation. You know how this works. Someone comes to you with inside knowledge to share but the real point of sharing is not to get you knowledge but to signal that he is in and you are out. If you defer, show you are impressed, cultivate a relationship, then maybe you too can be part of the cool kids, the insiders.
This is a tactic designed to entice you into the game. It’s hard to resist, just as all forms of “influence peddling” are quite effective. The culture of Washington, D.C. works this way. Everyone has a secret. Everyone has a contact. Everyone has a method, a passage, and path toward riches, fame, and power. The dripping of the poison in your ear is designed to disable you and dig up that little demon inside that desires to be part of the inner ring.
Once you see the game, and decide not to play it, you manage life on your own terms. You can find happiness and satisfaction. You no longer must be invited to the right parties, have the right friends, be part of the club, vacation at the right spots, sit in the valued seats, and so on. Instead, you are content with what you have. You are good and happy.
None of this is to deprecate ambition as such. But ambition should come from without, not always be motivated by the desire to be part of the inner circle so that you too can join in the exclusion game. That way is the path to becoming a miserable scoundrel just like so many others. Instead, writes Lewis, “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.”
Further: “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.”
This was Lewis’s advice for the young generation. He knew for sure that it would not be accepted or followed. Or maybe it will be followed by the happy 50 percent or maybe 1 percent. Regardless, those who will follow the right path will, in the end, be truly successful in life. They may not have the right marbles and might wear the wrong clothes or lack the power of a cabinet secretary—they might eventually but not because of overt trying to get them—but they will be spiritually satisfied. In the end, that should be the only driving ambition.
