Great post.
Just a thought.
I think pledges don't do anything either. It's a ritual, and symbolism as well. ( and something the same as cursing someone)
The pledges only put an idea in the minds of the slaves, something like.......oh they did a pledge now they are gonna dedicate their live to being honest, protection and justice etc. or something along those lines.
I (we) live in an Orwellian world of giant proportions. And it is not that that starts now or a while back. I (we) were born in it and it has been always that way. We are mindfucked from birth. (excuse the language ;)
Luckily there are still people who get out of the giant echo chamber.
Peace
For sure. The whole notion of pledges and oaths is ludicrous. First off, consent is an ongoing process. This becomes clear in the case of date rape, or some such situation whereby a person says "Yes" than change their mind and say "No." The "No" counts and the "Yes" is negated because consent must be renewed in every moment. So what's it mean to say "I will always do XYZ?" It's contrary to how consent works, and thus irrelevant at best, and immoral at worst.
Also, to hold someone to such a pledge, considering the above realization, would be to say "I reserve the right to override your consent because XYZ" (where, in the case of oaths, XYZ is "You spoke words 6 years ago"). It is never the case that you have a right to override consent (nor should you want to - how weird is that desire?) except when it pertains to protection of rights.
A relevant aside: If someone is attacking an innocent person, their consent to being physically stopped is not a factor. Their attempt to deny another person their rights obviates their own rights in this regard. Their right to consent is not being ignored or overridden - it ceases to exist. Were such a right/freedom to exist (the right/freedom to hurt innocent people, and consent to being stopped), that would mean that one freedom could infringe upon another. This is impossible, lest freedom in the aggregate become both "A" and "not A" (freedom in general would include both the attacker's freedom to attack, and the victim's freedom to deny consent to that attack). This would make freedom a concept with no definitive content, as it would include both a particular action and its negating opposite.
So as you say, pledges are mere ritual. They have no validity because they're redundant when continued consent is present, and invalid where it is not.