The Oath of Reliance
A short, optional text to read, speak aloud or simply keep close. Neither a religious oath nor a contract.
A text that makes one visible to oneself
The Oath of Reliance creates no obligation toward any institution. It opens no right. It establishes no membership. To support Sageocracy, nothing more is asked than registration on sageocracy.org, free and revocable.
For those who choose to pause over it, the Oath plays another role: it makes visible to oneself what one has already begun to carry. Where the commitment remains diffuse, the Oath gives it a form. Where the intention remains tacit, it sets it down in words.
Once spoken, it goes on working without one needing to think about it, it becomes a landmark to which one can return, when doubt sets in, when exhaustion takes hold, when one has strayed from what one had recognized as right. It is not made to be kept without fault. It is made to be true.
What the Oath is not
- A religious oath
- A legal contract
- A condition for being a Sageocrat
- An obligation toward the association
- A text to be kept without fault
What it is
- A personal, optional text
- A putting into words of a commitment already carried
- A landmark to return to
- An orientation, not a contract
- Faithfulness to oneself
Oath of Reliance
I commit to perceiving with attention and honesty, to looking at what is truly there, and not at what I would wish to see in it.
I commit to acting in coherence with what I perceive as right, knowing that this coherence will always remain imperfect, and that this imperfection is not a reason to give up seeking it.
I commit to contributing to the balance of the collectives of which I am part, not out of obligation, but because I understand that my own flourishing depends on the quality of what binds me to others.
I commit to acknowledging my mistakes, to naming them rather than concealing them, to understanding their causes rather than seeking those to blame, and to correcting them with the same rigor as that which I apply to my intentions.
I commit to respecting what lives, in the human beings around me, in the non-human forms of the living, and in the balances on which all life depends.
I commit to holding to this commitment over time, to not abandoning it when it becomes difficult, and to returning to it when I have strayed from it. I remain free, at any moment, to leave it.
How to inhabit this oath
This oath is not meant to be spoken according to a prescribed form. It can be read in silence, in a moment of inner clarity, without any outward witness, and that suffices.
It can also be shared before others, chosen not for their authority, but for the quality of presence they embody and for the value of their regard. The form matters little. What counts is the sincerity of the commitment and the fidelity with which it is reactivated over time. Each person remains free to set it aside, without having to justify it.
Its truth is not measured by the absence of error, but by the capacity to return, again and again, to what has been recognized as right. Those who speak it and who, later, feel distant from what they had affirmed, have not betrayed the Oath. They are called to return to it, and remain free to step away from it. That is precisely what the Oath serves: to point out, in moments of forgetting, the direction one had recognized.
The Oath does not immediately transform reality. It transforms the way one holds to it.
Its place among all the texts
Several documents articulate together what Sageocracy is. Each has a distinct function, without overlap.
The Constitution
The twelve articles that set out the principles and the framework. It is the reference document for understanding what Sageocracy organizes.
The Ethical Charter
The twelve concrete commitments that translate the three principles into everyday behavior. It is the reference document for common action.
The Oath of Reliance
A personal, optional text that each person can make their own. It is an intimate landmark, not a collective document. Its function is different.
The Constitution says what Sageocracy is. The Charter says how to live together within this framework. The Oath says how to hold oneself faithful to what one has recognized. The three can be read in any order.
Making this oath one's own
No one will check whether you have spoken it. No one will know whether you have stayed faithful to it each day. That is precisely what makes it a commitment, it has no force other than that which you give it.