The so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self.
This is from This is Water, a 2005 David Foster Wallace. 60 years before that, C. S. Lewis wrote about a specific type of craving that robs us of our freedom in The Inner Ring.
In any organization, in any society, there exist exclusive circles, or inner rings:
Some people are obviously in and some are obviously out […] 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.
We want to be part of those inner rings:
One of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local Ring and the terror of being left outside […] People who believe themselves to be free, and indeed are free, from snobbery, and who read satires on snobbery with tranquil superiority, may be devoured by the desire in another form […] Often the desire conceals itself so well that we hardly recognize the pleasures of fruition. Men tell not only their wives but themselves that it is a hardship to stay late at the office or the school on some bit of important extra work which they have been let in for because they and So-and-so and the two others are the only people left in the place who really know how things are run. But it is not quite true.
While the existence of an inner ring isn’t in itself bad, our need to be in it may lead us to do bad things:
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 the desire which draws us into Inner Rings is another matter. A thing may be morally neutral and yet the desire for that thing may be dangerous.
The desire to be in the inner ring is a powerful motivator:
This desire is one of the great permanent mainsprings of human action. It is one of the factors which go to make up the world as we know it—this whole pell-mell of struggle, competition, confusion, graft, disappointment and advertisement.
Don’t let this desire take over:
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. Any other kind of life, if you lead it, will be the result of conscious and continuous effort. If you do nothing about it, if you drift with the stream, you will in fact be an “inner ringer.” […] Of all the passions, the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things.
But there’s another reason to work on not letting the desire to be in control your life:
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. Until you conquer the fear of being an outsider, an outsider you will remain […] The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it.
Instead, do your work well and be a good friend:
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.
Nehaveigur 