Роканнон

With the myth of the State out of the way, the real mutuality and reciprocity of society and individual became clear, Sacrifice might be demanded of the individual, but never compromise: for, though only the society could give security and stability, only the individual, the person, had the power of moral choice - the power of change, the essential function of life. The Oxonian society was conceived as a permanent revolution, and revolution begins in the thinking mind.
...
He was therefore certain, by now, that his radical and unqualified will to create was, in Odonian terms, its own justification. His sense of primary responsibility towards his work did not cut him off from his fellows, from his society, as he had thought. It engaged him with them absolutely.
He also felt that a man who had this sense of responsibility about one thing was obliged to carry it through in all things. It was a mistake to see himself as its vehicle and nothing else, to sacrifice any other obligation to it.
...
There was process: precess was all. You could go in a promising direction or you could go wrong, but you did not set out with the expectation of ever stopping anywhere. All responsibilities, all commitments thus understood took on substance and duration.

.. .we're ashamed to say we've refused a posting. The social conscience completely dominates the individual conscience, instead of striking a balance with it. We don't cooperate - we obey. We fear being outcast, being called lazy, dysfunctional, egoizing. We fear out neighbour's opinion more than we respect our own freedom of choice.
...We have created crime, just as the propertarians did. We force a man outside the sphere of our approval, and then condemn him for it. We've made laws, laws of conventional behaviour, build walls all around ourselves, and we can't see them, because they're part of our thinking.

It is our suffering that brings together. It is not love. Love does not obey the mind, and turns to hate when forced. The bond that binds us is beyond choice. We are brothers. We are brothers in what we share. In pain, which each of us must suffer alone, in hunger, in poverty, in hope, we know our brotherhood. We know it, because we have had to learn it. We know that there is no help for us but from one another, that no hand will save us if we do not reach out our hand. And the hand that you reach out is empty, as mine is. You have nothing. You possess nothing. You own nothing. You are free. All you have is what you are, and what you give.

An Odonian undertook monogamy just as he might undertake a joint enterprise in production, a ballet or a soapworks. Partnership was a voluntarily constituted federation like any other. So long as it worked, it worked, and if it didn't work it stopped being. It was not an institution but a function. It had no sanction but that of private conscience.
This was fully in accord with Odonian social theory. The validity of the promise, even promise of indefinite term was deep in the grain of Odo's thinking; though it might seem that her insistence on freedom to change would invalidate the idea of promise or vow, in fact the freedom made the promise meaningful. A promise is a direction taken, a self-limitation of choice. As Ono pointed out, if no direction is taken, if one goes nowhere, no change will occur. One's freedom to choose and to change will be unused, exactly as if one were in jail, a jail of one's own building, a maze in which no one way is better than any other. So Odo came to see the promise, the pledge, the idea of fidelity, as essential in the complexity of freedom.

...сержанты имеют право отдавать приказания рядовым, лейтенанты — сержантам и рядовым, капитаны… и так далее, и так далее, вплоть до генералов, которые имеют право отдавать приказания всем остальным, а им самим не может отдавать приказания никто, кроме главнокомандующего. Шевек тогда слушал с недоверчивым отвращением.

— И вы называете это организацией? — спросил он. — И даже дисциплиной? Но это же ни то, ни другое. Это необычайно малоэффективный механизм принуждения!

(...) Раньше он не понимал, что цель состоит в том, чтобы дать возможность людям с пулеметами без затруднений убивать безоружных мужчин и женщин, когда им велят это делать.