From Narnia to networking: C. S. Lewis and The Inner Ring

British author C.S. Lewis is famous as the author of the Chronicles of Narnia series of fantasy books. He is less known, however, for a fascinating speech he gave to a group of undergraduates on how to network authentically and avoid the lure of what he called “the Inner Ring”.

The Inner Ring

Chris was almost right - The Inner Ring was presented to a group of King’s College, London undergraduates in the Memorial Lecture at King’s College, London, in 1944.

The speech opens with a quote from Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, in which a general - officially a high-ranking member of the Russian military - is made to wait to speak to Prince Andrey, a (middle-ranking) captain, while he chats casually with Boris, a low-ranking lieutenant. Boris realises that alongside the official hierarchy of the army exists an unofficial, unspoken hierarchy of social inclusion and exclusion.

This is what Lewis calls the Inner Ring; the exclusive circles that people invariably create and are drawn to throughout their lives. So powerful is their gravitational pull that he describes the desire to join these Inner Rings as “one of the great permanent mainsprings of human action”.

I believe that in all [people’s] lives at certain periods, and in many [people’s] lives at all periods between infancy and extreme old age, one of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local Ring and the terror of being left outside.

The desire to belong

Mid-way through the speech, Lewis states his belief that the existence of inner rings in itself is not necessarily a bad thing; but the desire we have to join them can be bad, and damaging.

Lewis asserts that he believes his audience are not, at the time, “scoundrels,” but that the law of averages states that a handful of them will grow up to be in time. He suggests that the first subtle steps they take towards an unscrupulous path in life will be baited by the desire to be included in the in-group of someone that seeks to lead them astray.

There is also an ultimate futility to being driven by the desire to associate with certain people, to be “in the know”; namely, that every time we join a new inner circle, its mystique evaporates, its novelty soon wears off. Simultaneously another, previously invisible Inner Ring becomes known, which we then turn our attention to joining. Lewis compares the attempt to peeling an onion: “if you succeed, you will have nothing left.”

Transcending the lure

Lewis’s solution is not only beautifully simple, but it serves as a comforting, common-sense guide to how “networking,” in a professional context, can be done without the pretence, stress and artificiality which the word typically evokes.

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.

In other words, enjoying the work we do will naturally lead to the admiration of our peers, and organically part of Inner Rings that have wholesome, productive outlooks at their core.

The same is true of our social relationships.

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. But the difference is that the secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric: for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship.

In other words, Lewis told these undergraduates on the verge of starting their journeys through the working world, the best thing we can do for our careers, our social relationships, and ultimately our own happiness, is to avoid the temptation to “network” for the sake of exclusive power, influence or hidden knowledge, and instead to revel in the work we enjoy the most and relax in the company of those most like ourselves.

References and further reading

• https://www.lewissociety.org/innerring/