Week 6: "The Inner Ring"

1.Lewis describes the phenomenon of "Inner Rings" — the invisible circles of insiders in every organization, school, and community. Do you recognize this phenomenon? Can you describe an Inner Ring you have encountered or longed to enter?

2.Lewis argues that the desire to be inside is not always — or even usually — about power or money. It is about something more primal: the pleasure of belonging, of being one of us. Why does this make the desire both more understandable and more dangerous?

3.Lewis makes the chilling prediction that the quest for the Inner Ring will, unless checked, make a man a scoundrel — not through one dramatic choice, but through a hundred small compromises, each of which "seemed so small." Where have you seen — or personally experienced — this gradual moral erosion?