To eat, to breathe
to beget
Is this all there is
Chance configuration of atom against atom
I cannot believe it.
Come, Christian Triune God who lives,
Here am I
Shake the world again.
-Francis Schaeffer

Lewis’ “inner ring” is so telling of how we think in relation to others, so below are some more quotes from him on the efforts of elitists and the elusive inner workings of the upper echelon of society.

“Until you conquer the fear of being an outsider, an outsider you will remain.” (from previous post)

“whether you have talked to fellow members of the Ring in the presence of outsiders simply in order that the outsiders might envy; whether the means whereby, in your days of probation, you propitiated the Inner Ring, were always wholly admirable.”

“In the whole of your life as you now remember it, has the desire to be on the right side of that invisible line ever prompted you to any act or word on which, in the cold small hours of a wakeful night, you can look back with satisfaction?”

“The lust for the esoteric, the longing to be inside, take many forms which are not easily recognizable as Ambition. We hope, no doubt, for tangible profits from every Inner Ring we penetrate: power, money, liberty to break rules, avoidance of routine duties, evasion of discipline.”

“this desire is one of the great permanent main-springs of human action.”

“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.”

“If you do nothing about it, if you drift with the stream, you will in fact be an ‘inner ringer.’”

“The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it.”

“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 center of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring.”

C. S. Lewis ponders a pervasive challenge which plagues humanity: elitism. The “inner ring” is the circle of people who by direct or indirect means exclude others. The others are the “outsiders”. These people, which includes every one in respect to every ring, strive their whole life jumping through hoops for the more verdant pastures. How shall we do otherwise? Lewis quips, “Until you conquer the fear of being an outsider, an outsider you will remain.”