Of the Lewis essays we have read so far during DCM, this ranks up there as one of my favorites. The one point it stressed with me is that there are inner rings everywhere and we can't avoid them. they are at work, at church, at home, in school, everywhere. We were asked in the discussion if we thought that inner rings were a bad thing, I answered both ways, they're good and bad. I found a quote in the text that said "the number of people who first smoked or first got drunk for a similar reason is probably very large." I think that having to be initiated (in some cases) or doing desperate things to get into an inner ring can be very very bad. These are usually the people who seek a sense of belonging and have a low self esteem, in which case the ring members can't help but to see just how far the person is willing to go to be a part of the click. This is when inner rings are very very bad.
Inner rings can also be very good because it establishes sort of a pecking order amongst people. You may not think it the way I did, but isn't the world just one giant ring? You've got the the governments followed by the working and so on down. We might has well just face, inner rings are just as much a part of everyday life as eating. In some form, everyone is in an inner ring. I know I am in a few inner rings, these rings are the people I trust the most and can really rely on as friends. I liked the quote "Exclusion is no accident; it is the essence." This quote really speaks on how clicks exclude people who they don't see fit for the group, and Lewis says it right, it is no accident, people blatantly exclude others time and time again. I know I have been excluded a few times in my life and it sucks, it really does, but thats how it goes, life goes on you know? One thing I think that people should avoid is letting exclusion get to their head, if someone doesn't want you just forget them and move on before things get too bad, remember the more you try the funnier they'll think it is, so don't be that person, be strong.
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I would have to agree with you on almost every point. I’ll be the first to admit I have never thought of the entire world as a giant series of rings existing within each other and I thought it was a great insight. While I think that it is not necessarily the rings themselves but the individual actions of the members and applicants of each ring that we simplify into calling a bad ring. I did however like how you used rings to explain how order is established. Over all I liked it.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that inner rings are a part of everyday life. I could name off all kinds of inner rings I am a part of, many of which I don't even think about. I think that inner rings, like many other things, are not evil in themselves but only in how we treat others through them.
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