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There are few who have not heard of C. S. Lewis, the Oxford don whose cascade of writings ranges from the academic—Vol. lll of the Oxford History of English Literature; English Literature in the Sixteenth Century—to the Chronicles of Narnia. His books, a few translated into over thirty languages, sell in the millions and not many young (and now older) readers have not sailed the seas and climbed the hills of Narnia on page and screen. Lewis ranks with the world’s great writers. Those negligible persons who send out a paragraph or two by email every couple of weeks, are a scratch in the sand next to a mountain, a valuable mountain.

Lewis has written over thirty books and dozens of articles, reviews, and essays. I know of one negligible person who actually has read (with limited understanding) some of Lewis’ works, and he claims that of them all, for him, personally, one of the most insightful and influential is “The Inner Ring”, a memorial oration Lewis gave in 1944 at the University of London. You may read it online.

An ‘Inner Ring’ is a small group of people in any school, office, or organization who are bound together in an unarticulated assumption that they are special, important, and “in the know”. Inner Ring membership is vague; you don’t apply to be formally admitted.  You can be in one day and out the next without even knowing or knowing why. There is snobbery in an Inner Ring, condescension toward those who are outside, and there is also great danger, for Inner Ringers may find it necessary to cut a corner here, ignore a rule there, perhaps abandon a friend who is outside. Greater descents may follow.

Lewis is well aware of what he is talking about. Human nature is such that self-interest—in one form a desire to be in an ‘Inner Ring’—can easily lead us along subtle pathways into dark corners and hidden dangers, and all thoughtful people, negligible to grand, are well advised to read and consider “The Inner Ring” by C. S. Lewis.