The Responsibility Project

Liberty Mutual

Responsibility. What’s your policy?™

Blog: Ethics

Growing Up

Posted on July 16, 2008 by Kathy McManus Comments (1)

If you find it difficult sometimes to define responsibility, watch Growing Up and see four extraordinary young people go beyond definitions to live the word in truly inspiring ways. Read full article »
Just Rewards: Banking On It?

Posted on July 15, 2008 by Kathy McManus Comments (26)

If you do the right thing, should you expect to be rewarded? Yes, say three men in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The men—all city-employed water department workers—were on the job when they discovered an abandoned safe at the side of a road. The safe had been stolen by robbers who broke through the wall of a local bank during a winter ice storm. Read full article »
Too Old To Be Responsible?

Posted on July 8, 2008 by Kathy McManus Comments (11)

There’s an age when society expects people to be responsible—usually about 21. But is there also an age when people are no longer expected to be responsible? How about 73? That’s the age a California widower named Robert Pyle was when he made a series of decisions that triggered a financial freefall, resulting in the loss of his $650,000 home and $500,000 life savings. Read full article »
Fertility Treatments: For Convenience?

Posted on July 3, 2008 by Kathy McManus Comments (17)

Motherhood—achieving it and surviving it—is a perennially popular topic of blog discussions. But rarely does one comment continue to draw responses years after first being posted, like the following one has from a woman who wanted to undergo IVF fertility treatments as a matter of convenience. Read full article »
Needling Questions: Immunizing Kids

Posted on July 1, 2008 by Kathy McManus Comments (109)

If you choose not to have your child vaccinated against measles, mumps, chicken pox, and other infectious diseases, does your responsibility end there? It is a debate that continues as the trend for not vaccinating children increases. Read full article »
Parenting or Spying: Who’s Watching The Kids?

Posted on June 26, 2008 by Kathy McManus Comments (38)

If you electronically monitor every website your kids view, secretly read all their instant messages, filter their TV viewing, restrict their incoming and outgoing calls, and track their movements by GPS devices lurking in their backpacks and cell phones, are you parenting, or spying? Read full article »
Murder, He Wrote

Posted on June 23, 2008 by Kathy McManus Comments (9)

If you can’t kill a man, forgive him instead. That was the mind-boggling moral journey undertaken by a writer named David Holthouse, who, along the way, was forced to define and redefine his views of personal responsibility. Read full article »
Spinning: Out of Control in the Gym?

Posted on June 19, 2008 by Kathy McManus Comments (5)

Silence may be golden, but its recent pursuit in a New York City gym has set off a loud debate about entitlement and personal responsibility. It started in a spin class, when a 49-year-old Wall Street investment partner named Stuart Sugarman began yelling and grunting comments like “You go, girl!” and “Good burn!” as he cycled. Read full article »
Lighthouse

Posted on June 17, 2008 by Kathy McManus Comments (2)

Sometimes being responsible is a burden. A lopsided obligation. A lonely and thankless job. In the wonderfully animated short film Lighthouse, a grumpy lighthouse keeper makes sure that a safe little seaside town stays that way, by dutifully maintaining the beacon that shines above it. Read full article »
Having a Third Child

Posted on June 10, 2008 by Kathy McManus Comments (74)

Pamela Paul wants a third child. Writing in the Washington Post about her desire to have a “sprawling” family like the one she grew up in—“with seven brothers, real and step”—Paul mused about the high cost of raising a child these days: $204,060 according to a new federal estimate. Read full article »