Finding The 'Inner Ring'
Exclusivity and Inclusivity of Communities, and the Feeling of Home
The Inner Ring
C.S. Lewis captured this phenomenon in his essay The Inner Ring:
...(it) is not printed anywhere. Nor is it even a formally organised secret society with officers and rules which you would be told after you had been admitted. 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.
Lewis warned that this longing to enter the Inner Ring can become a subtle moral trap. You start bending yourself to be accepted — not for your values, but for the status of belonging. You start to crave ‘the subtle, often morally compromising desire to be part of an exclusive group, not for its values, but for the status of being inside.’
The search for the ‘Inner Ring’ can be not only toxic, and a major distraction for you from where you actually want to be.
“The quest of the Inner Ring will break your heart unless you break it.”
‘Hey I’m Dave’
I recently watched Dave, the show about Lil Dicky. Beyond its hilarious takes on Hollywood, love, authenticity, and ambition—the classic hero’s arc of “started from the bottom, now we here” — what struck me most was how fearless Dave is about cringe.
He’s not afraid to be obscene or emotionally raw, sexually awkward or socially desperate. He embraces what others might find embarrassing—failure, insecurity, yearning—and somehow makes it all lovable.
Dave awkwardly ‘injecting’ himself to be in a selfie with celebrities at the Met Gala
Unless you’ve been unbelievably cool your whole life (which, respect), you’ve probably felt that quiet ache of wanting to belong. That pang when you realize you’re not one of the “cool kids.” Whether it’s in school, at work, or among any chosen community — there’s a version of you that just wants in, but you’re too afraid to admit it.
Our social circles have become subversively commodified as are many other things in life. I feel this is extremely obvious when I lived in LA. In the entertainment or tech industry, who you know matters so much, sometimes people make it seem like that’s all that matters.
“The worst place to be is when you care about being invited… but you’re not. Either you’re cool and you’re in, or you genuinely don’t care.”
Said a friend of mine as she gets ready to go to a seemingly exclusive, invite-only artist gathering in SF.
When you find yourself at that awkward position of being not on the inside, you can either choose to pursue the Inner Ring, play the status game:
We all play status games, competing for approval and acclaim from our fellow group members. Higher status often brings more access to resources, more mating opportunities, and better prospects for our offspring. But it also meets our emotional needs for meaning, purpose, and self-worth.
It’s perfectly fine, artists want to be seen, writers want to be read, and founders want their products to be used. But don’t pretend that it’s not important to you if it is. Maybe you’ll find peace once you reach that goal, maybe you won’t, but at least you were faithful to yourself.
Or… you might be looking at the wrong ring here. Maybe from your perspective, you’re not the right fit for them, but they are also not the right fit for you.
It’s Prestigious, but it's the Wrong Ring
I remember the times when I was surrounded by “prestigious” tech elites, established artists, startup founders, people who I consider “made it in life.” Everyone had gorgeous houses, impressive résumés, and opinions on homelessness in Skid Row… voiced over $20 spirulina smoothies the morning after a night of wild psychedelic cocaine binge.
There’s this unspoken rule about these social settings: to be invited, you have to prove you’re interesting. You have to be sharp, witty, wealthy, or charismatic. You can’t be basic.
On paper, I was having fun. I had a lot of “friends.” But deep down, I felt so lonely, probably the loneliest time of my life. I felt deeply unseen. I guess it’s one of those things Los Angeles does to you.
I had to jump off many hoops and toss myself to many different groups of people, to even start to realize what kind of ‘inner ring’ feels right for me, not just what looks good in the ideal imagery of life I paint for myself, but what actually feels right.
"Welcome Home"
Someone said that to me at my first and only Rainbow Gathering. I didn’t understand what it meant until I stayed for a while. Then I get it.
It was during COVID when Shanghai had those really brutal lockdowns. I was afraid to visit home, so I didn’t. I’ve never been apart from my family for that long. I met this stranger at this Rainbow Gathering, and he started singing a Chinese song he learned over the internet to me. It was very hard for me to hold my tears back.
When I started visiting intentional communities and coliving spaces, I was struck by the contrast from the default tech culture I knew of. In these places, people actually listened. Not performative allyship, not fake smiles that vanish the moment you don’t get an inside joke, but real curiosity and acceptance.
The final scene of Mad Man, Don Draper Meditating in a Commune
The ‘commune’ culture shifted the broader mainstream in this way. Once you’re in, you’re in. You’re family. Nobody cares about your race, your haircut, your degree, your ‘coolness score’, how smart you are, how naked you are, how afraid you are.
That’s what radical inclusion feels like. For the first time, the Inner Ring disappeared. I wasn’t inside it or outside it. I just didn’t see it anymore. The “ring” became wherever I was, with whomever I was with. I realized that the Inner Ring is made up —- we are making it up —- all the time, everywhere.
The Middle Way
There’s a noticeable divide between places with communitarian idealism and techno-progressive ambition. In many alternative communities, there’s a tendency to romanticize pre-modern harmony and, often by default, reject technological advancement.
The warmth, generosity, and spirit of radical inclusion from alternative communities offered me something I had always yearned for: a place to be deeply seen, accepted, loved, and simply be.
And yet, after a while, I began to miss something else.
I missed the conversations that kept me on my toes — the deep dives into esoteric texts, the spirited debates with deeply researched topics, the exhilarating feeling of pushing intellectual boundaries. I missed the energy of invention, of building new worlds, of challenging systems not just in theory, but in practice.
I missed being in rooms where people were pushing the frontier boundaries of their fields—about consciousness, cutting-edge technologies, and deep academia research. I missed the kind of stimulation that left me feeling stretched, expanded, and even a little overwhelmed.
It doesn’t have to be a binary. It never did. It’s the Middle Way, it’s always been about the Middle Way. 😀
Getting Over It
Getting Over It by Bennett Foddy – metaphorically, it is deeply related to this topic
Once, feeling intellectually overwhelmed triggered deep insecurity in me. I’d feel “shaken” around brilliant people, assuming I didn’t belong. But over time, I came to see that for what it was, it was my ego, not reality.
What we see in others is often a reflection of what we have inside ourselves.
— Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche (Tibetan Buddhist teacher)
All this time, I thought it was them—the Inner Ring, the status games, the closed doors. But in truth, the fear of not belonging came from within.I got tired of trying to prove I was worthy—to anyone. Because I wasn’t proving it to them. I was proving it to myself.
The root source of all these layers of fears was not external, it was internal. And I put in the work, psychologically, spiritually, a lot of work —- meditations, public performances, leaping to unfamiliar social circles —- all to slowly peel away that fear.
Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness of other people.
—– Carl Jung
I’ve since decided: I can be dull, I can be awkward, I don’t have to ‘get it’, and I’m not a genius. And I accept it all. This kind of radical self-acceptance became my secret weapon. It let me move freely between worlds. It made me feel at home, wherever I was.
Finding the Right Communities
After much wandering—and much self-inquiry—I’m beginning to recognize what kind of communities make me thrive: places with open-hearted acceptance of communal life and the visionary momentum of innovation.
I want to be in spaces where the builder and the caregiver, the coder and the gardener, the strategist and the poet are all celebrated—together.
I want to be with communities that are ambitious and kind, intuitive and rational; people who build startups, push boundaries, grow gardens, and mother children, people who strive for excellence and are grounded in compassion.
Where are the communities that dream of colonizing Mars and ending homelessness?
It’s not everywhere, but they do exist.
Last week, I spent time with my friends Morgan and Mariana in Berkeley. They reminded me of the archetype I most resonate with: highly intellectual, impact-driven, deeply caring, and refreshingly humble. They’re the kind of people who light me up. And I feel amazing spending time with them.
About larger communities, in all honesty, this isn’t meant to sound like a pitch, but Edge City has come the closest to embodying my ideal community. A space that is both intellectually rigorous and warmly welcoming.
People here are passionate about tech, but what they’re really passionate about is humanity.
People ‘passionately’ doing workouts in the morning during Edge City Austin
Finding, Building, Choosing Your ‘Inner Ring’
Not everyone is born into an environment that nurtures them. Sometimes, you have to travel across continents to find ‘your people’. But it’s worth the journey.
Yes, we’re told that the Inner Ring is toxic. That it’s all status games and ego, especially when it becomes a game of exclusion. And sometimes it is. But not always.
Not when you choose it consciously, from a place of acceptance and curiosity. I think everyone deserves to be with the people who accept them and inspire them, and if they’re not feeling that way, they should go out and search for them.
Whatever the ‘ideal community’ means for you, if that’s your ‘Inner Ring’, then you should feel encouraged to go seek it out. It should not be cringy, and we should not feel ashamed to do so.
Community Recommendations
If I can give some resources for the kind of ‘Protopian’ communities that are equally progressive and accepting, this would be the list:
There’s a lot more nuanced and less-known communities. If you want to explore more, or have recommendations, leave a comment, DM me, join the Discord, or check out the Agartha map.
thinking of a quote often attributed to Maya Angelou:
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
A summer camp counselor told me that when I was a teenager and struggling to fit in. It’s my strategy for connecting across many rings…but I still find myself missing that feeling of being on the “inside” sometimes
Nico! Hi! What a wonderful piece. Thank you. I can relate to this in more ways than I can type.
Los Angeles life (lol @ CK and spirulina!), tech culture, living in intentional community, feeling like an insider and outsider.
Looking forward to more.