C. S. Lewis aptly describes in one published lecture the nature of a very human game, which is really about how soft power, which is often buttressed by institutional position, works in any human organization. To use Nietzsche’s expression (which Lewis would have hardly appreciated), the dynamics of an inner ring is human, all too human, and thus hardly an extractible part of the human condition. Yet it is much more salient, and arguably even dysfunctional, in just some organizations, especially those that have an elite reputation such as Yale, whose essence, we shall investigate here, might be exclusion even within the university community, such that some vulnerable members are told they are not really members (but that their donations are welcome).
In my essay, “Yale’s
Original Sin,” I describe Yale’s culture of inner-exclusion operating within the
university, wherein some insiders are relegated by inner-insiders as outsiders.
During my stay as an alumnus doing research for a book I was writing, I was
astonished to read emails from non-academic employees in which they bluntly stated
that I was not a “member of the Yale community” because I was an alum. Unfortunately, and quite tellingly, those explicit
statements were just the tip of the iceberg. Much more common, in more sense
than one ironically, were the intentional subtle hints given by some faculty,
faculty-administrators, and even non-academic employees that I was not worth
their time whether in replying to an email message or in conversation. This extended to the faculty culture being averse to allowing alumni (and other scholars, as a courtasy) to audit courses and to that of clerical employees not recognizing alumni in residence for a term as members of the Yale community. This self-serving, arrogant, and deeply mistaken attitude and belief applied in a counter-productive way to charging alumni in residence $4 more than students, faculty, and the non-academic employees themselves, for lunch at the university lunch hall known as Commons. A common mentality to be sure.
In his lecture entitled, “The
Inner Ring,” C. S. Lewis describes the ubiquitous phenomenon that he calls the inner
ring of an organization. “I can assure you,” he tells his audience, “that in
whatever hospital, inn of court, diocese, school, business, or college you
arrive . . . , you will find the Rings—what Tolstoy calls the second or
unwritten systems.” In War and Peace, Tolstoy alludes to such an
informal yet firmly hierarchical or concentric system: “(S)ide by side with the
system of discipline and subordination which were laid down in the Army
Regulations, there existed a different and more real system—the system which
compelled a tightly laced general with a purple face to wait respectfully for
his turn while a mere captain like Prince Andrey chatted with a mere second
lieutenant like Boris.” The general is not royalty, and so he deferred to the prince
even though the latter was of a lower rank. The general was thus an outsider in
the immediate context of the prince’s conversation even though he is very much
an insider among military brass.
We mere humans revile being relegated
as outsiders; we very much want to be insiders. This is C. S. Lewis’ main
point. “My main purpose in this address is simply to convince you that this
desire is one of the great permanent mainsprings of human action.”
Specifically, he means here “the desire to be inside the local Ring and the
terror of being left outside.” This desire and fear can be distinguished from
the desire for personal gain and the fear of going homeless out of financial
ruin. “And you will be drawn in, if you are drawn in, not by desire for gain or
ease, but simply because at that moment, when the cup was so near your lips,
you cannot bear to be thrust back again into the cold outer world. It would be
so terrible to see the other man’s face—that genial, confidential, delightfully
sophisticated face—turn suddenly cold and contemptuous, to know that you had
been tried for the Inner Ring and rejected.” In other words, wanting to feel oneself
as an insider and to avoid feeling like an outsider are desires that do not
necessarily line up with, or reduce to, the desire for political or economic
gain.
As with any desire, the desire to
be an insider cannot be permanently satiated once achieved. C.S. Lewis wrote, “As long as you are
governed by that desire you will never get what you want. You are trying to
peel an onion: if you succeed there will be nothing left. . . . Once the first
novelty is worn off, the members of this circle will be no more interesting
than your old friends.” Or perhaps a ring within that ring will emerge, and you
will have a new impediment to feeling like an insider. Even if that is
achieved, you would still suffer from the fear that you could become an
outsider, for the grounds from relegating you are informal in this secondary
system and thus secretive and hardly subject to the moral principle of
fairness. C. S. Lewis goes so far as to declare, “Until you conquer the fear of
being an outsider, an outsider you will remain.”
The combination of secrecy and
informality in an inner ring, or circle, renders unfairness from personal like
and dislike especially likely. An official hierarchy, in contrast, operates
ideally on the basic of merit, with avenues for appeals. Money in the form of
bribes and political power can less ideally come into play in formal
hierarchies. So too can friendships. But these more informal means of promotion
and demotion are more the currency of inclusion and exclusion in informal
hierarchies, such as C. S. Lewis describes. To be rejected for lack of merit
is, I submit, easier to take than by unfair means or reasons. The latter is
evinced when the decision-makers are hidden from view and thus appeals to them
cannot be made. This passage from C. S. Lewis describes the subtle mechanics of
an inner ring very well:
“You are never formally and
explicitly admitted by anyone. You discover gradually, in almost indefinable
ways, that it exists and that you are outside it; and then later, perhaps, that
you are inside it. . . . It is not easy, even at a given moment, to say who is
inside and who is outside. Some people are obviously in and some are obviously
out, but there are always several on the borderline. . . . There are no formal
admissions or expulsions. People think they are in it after they have in fact
been pushed out of it, or before they have been allowed in: this provides great
amusement for those who are really inside. It has no fixed name.”
The subtle messages in the rude behavior from Yale
faculty, academic administrators, non-academic employees, and even some students
that I describe above and in “Yale’s Original Sin” are the means by which ill-favored Yalies gradually discover that they have already been rendered outsiders. That the realization of having been excluded
can occur gradually opens up the outsider to embarrassment, for the insiders
relish watching as if the person with a blindfold on is stumbling over
furniture. The behavior could be regarded superficially as mere rudeness, so it
can be difficult if one is on the receiving end to detect that one is being
handed one’s hat on the way out. A person may just stand there, holding one’s
hat, wondering why a person just felt the need to deliver the hat even if the other
person intended to send the message, you are no longer welcome here but I
can’t kick you out of the building. This is precisely the message that
people in Yale’s inner rings (and there are more than one) want to send. Bottom
line: such people refuse to tolerate even the very presence of a person they
don’t like. This includes a person who holds a contrary opinion. The motive, in
other words, goes beyond wanting to make sophomoric statements of superiority; the
intention is also meant to convey to others that they are outsiders. Whereas
gorillas establish superiority and push certain individuals out by physical
means, our species is not so forthright and honest (or brave).
In the movie Contact
(1997), Haddon, a millionaire, says to Ellie, a young astrophysicist who wants
to be chosen to go on a space mission, “The powers that be have been very busy
lately, falling over themselves to position themselves for the game of the
millennium. Maybe I can help deal you back in.” By this he is referring to
being dealt cards in a card game. Ellie takes the hint and replies, “I didn’t
realize that I was out,” to which Haddon says, “Maybe not out, but certainly
being handed your hat.” Ellie has no
idea that even her boss, in jockeying for position to be chosen as the
astronaut, has been working to see to it that Ellie is eliminated from
consideration by the inner ring of which the boss is an insider but Ellie is
not. She has no access to that circle of power-elites, so she doesn’t even know
that she needs to promote or defend herself, or even appeal. From outside the
inner ring, its workings are shrouded with mystery, for outsiders are not privy
to the phone calls and other conversations that take place within. As C.S.
Lewis wrote, “There are no formal admissions or expulsions. People think they
are in it after they have in fact been pushed out of it, or before they have
been allowed in: this provides great amusement for those who are really inside.
It has no fixed name.” Ellie’s boss gets pleasure from dealing her out,
especially because this is being done without her knowledge. C. S. Lewis wrote,
“It is not easy, even at a given moment, to say who is inside and who is
outside. Some people are obviously in and some are obviously out, but there are
always several on the borderline.”
Interesting, C. S. Lewis must have known that the
question of whether the phenomenon of the inner ring, even manifesting in a
seminary, is evil was being asked. If, as I strongly suspect, exclusionary
comments and actions are deliberately done at least in part to emotionally hurt
other people, even just out of dislike, the question of whether such insiders
are de facto evil is relevant. C. S Lewis focuses his answer at the level
of the ring, but with implications for its inhabitants. “I am not going to say that the existence of
Inner Rings is an Evil. It is certainly unavoidable. There must be confidential
discussions: and it is not only a bad thing, it is (in itself) a good thing,
that personal friendship should grow up between those who work together.” But
this is just one side of the coin, or ring. Lewis admits that the “genuine
Inner Ring exists for exclusion. There’d be no fun if there were no outsiders.
The invisible line would have no meaning unless most people were on the wrong
side of it. Exclusion is no accident; it is the essence.” These last two sentences
may aptly describe the dark side of Yale. This is not to say that the essence
of Yale is exclusively exclusion, for that would imply that no other source of
worth, in this case, academic, exists in the organization. Even so, exclusion
is an excessive, or hypertrophic instinctual urge in many people there,
especially in those who work there.
Lewis claims that the anguish in being reckoned as an outsider is a strong human motivating force in wanting to be counted as insiders. But if a group, or its inner ring, is filled with rude, petty elitists, wouldn't a normal person feel some solace and even self-esteem in being an outsider? I suppose whether this is one's own choice or that of the "members" of a ring makes a difference here. Nevertheless, Nietzsche wrote that the
healthy should not visit the sick in hospital lest the healthy catch something.
In Christianity, Paul warns about hanging out with fools. Depending on the group,
a person might very well relish being an outsider, even if not by choice. Some rings have bad odors.
A question posed by C. S. Lewis seems relevant: “I must not ask
whether you have derived actual pleasure from the loneliness and humiliation of
the outsiders after you, yourself were in: 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. I will ask only one
question—and it is, of course, a rhetorical question which expects no answer. 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? If so, your case is more fortunate than most.” From this, I
surmise that Lewis reckoned that such people are bad, and even malicious, but
not evil, because what he was describing was human nature itself.
In Augustine’s theology, we are
all subject to original sin. Proverbially, we are all sons and daughters of
Adam and Eve. Evil, it seems to me, cannot simply be human nature itself, but,
rather, an extreme in enjoying human suffering. But even this definition is problematic,
for sociopathy is a psychological illness rather than a religious phenomenon.
Evil is a distinctly religious term. I think the problem is psychological where
exclusion is allowed to fill in a void to become the essence of an organization.
Taken to the extreme, exclusion as substance or the raison d’etre of an
organization and thus being its very essence snuffs out other possible substances
and thus must ultimately collapse. Relatedly, M. Scott Peck writes in People
of the Lie that it is a sense of inner emptiness that lies at the core of
malignant narcissism. Perhaps that is responsible for the dysfunctional organizational culture of inner-exclusion from within that has plagued Yale.
