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Uncle Theology · The Inner Ring · Track 10

Welcome to the Inner Ring

The Inner RingTrack 10 of 12
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About this songThe feast anthem - 'science is morality,' 'have your pleasure all in threes' - dissolving into a psychedelic haze where 'the lips, the tongue, the hands, the face are nothing more than interfaces.' The abolition of the person, sung as bliss; Dan closes it in the Director's own words.
Big ideaThe album's centerpiece: the Director crowns Dan with 'science is morality' and 'have your pleasure all in threes,' and as the room dissolves into psychedelic haze the creed is unveiled, the body is only an interface and pleasure happens in the mind.
Source
Lewis, The Inner Ring / The Abolition of Man
Voice
the Director, then a hall of voices, then Dan
Hook
'Welcome to the Inner Ring! ...Science is morality.'
The Director

I'm sorry, Dan, for all that blood.
Six full vials - beyond and above.
But now we get to the part that I love:
The Welcome Feast!

The Director (mock-modest)

The numbers state that the members of this team
do four times the good the average human brings.
And so we three-X the normal feast
to welcome you to this Inner Ring.
And you can have whatever you see -
for science IS morality.

Chorus

Have your pleasure all in threes.
Science is morality.
You've joined our club, and so we feast -
Welcome to the Inner Ring!

The machine (the psychedelic shift)

The lips, the tongue, the hands, the face
are nothing more than interfaces.
The pleasure happens inside the mind.
So take these pills and you will find
all that you desire.

Final Chorus - Dan

Have your pleasure all in threes...
Science is morality...
I've joined your club, and so we feast -
Welcome to the Inner Ring.
Welcome to the Inner Ring.

Scripture References

  1. Romans 1:21-25
  2. Ecclesiastes 2:1-11
  3. 1 John 2:15-17

Study this song

Teaching aids drawn from the song — for personal study or group discussion.

How the song moves

1
The apology and the crowning
The Director opens by apologizing for the blood, 'six full vials, beyond and above,' then pivots to 'the part that I love: the Welcome Feast.' The debt is waved away and the reward announced. The Ring always frames its cost as generosity, the price you paid becomes proof of how much they honor you.
2
'Science is morality' as liturgy
The chorus turns the Conditioners' creed into a drinking song, a hall of voices answering the Director, glasses clinking in the percussion, 'Have your pleasure all in threes. Science is morality.' Lewis's abstract warning becomes a feast-hall liturgy; evil here is not grim but festive, sung in rounds.
3
The psychedelic dissolve
The room dissolves, tape-warped and backwards-smeared, and the vocoder returns, intimate: 'The lips, the tongue, the hands, the face are nothing more than interfaces. The pleasure happens inside the mind. So take these pills and you will find all that you desire.' The body reduced to hardware, and the word 'desire' pitch-bends down into nothing, the abolition of man set to a comedown.

Key terms & allusions

  • the Inner Ring (unveiled) — Here the Ring is finally named as the reward. Lewis's essay ends by insisting the cure is not to chase the Ring but to do good work with people you love, which becomes real friendship, a circle that never had a door. The album shows the counterfeit at full volume so the true fellowship can be felt by contrast.
  • 'the body is nothing more than interfaces' — The Institute's final reduction: lips, tongue, hands, and face are mere hardware, and pleasure is a signal in the mind. It denies the goodness of embodied creation and the incarnation itself, the Word made flesh, treating the body as a peripheral to be optimized away.
  • 'take these pills' — The sacrament of the counterfeit feast: pleasure delivered chemically, 'all that you desire' promised in a capsule, the word desire bending down into nothing. It is the Conditioners' endgame, satisfaction engineered directly into the mind, a joy with no object and no other person in it.
  • 'science is morality' — The album's most repeated lie, sung now as communal creed. Lewis: once the Tao is denied, 'science' cannot supply an ought, so what rushes in is the Conditioners' own appetite claiming the authority of fact, festivity masking the abolition of the good.

Discussion questions

  1. Evil in this song is festive, not grim, a feast, a chorus, clinking glasses. Why is celebratory evil harder to resist than obvious menace?
  2. 'The body is nothing more than interfaces; the pleasure happens inside the mind.' What does the Christian confession of the body and the incarnation say back to that?
  3. Lewis's answer to the Inner Ring is real friendship, a circle with no door. What would it look like to want that instead of the Ring?

For contemplation

  1. Where am I being offered 'all that you desire' in a form that quietly removes the persons desire was made for?
  2. Is my joy attached to real people and real work, or am I chasing a pleasure that 'happens inside the mind' alone?