Mooney: With freedom comes responsibility

The great psychiatrist Victor Frankl’s idea of a Statue of Responsibility for our West Coast to balance the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast is inspiring.

It will represent basic ethics and its characteristics of virtue, altruism, love, good sportsmanship, and compassion. I hope the Golden Rule in English — along with other golden rules in Farsi, Sanskrit, modern Hebrew, and dozens more — will be engraved upon its surface.

The 300-plus-foot tall design is beautiful. The Statue of Responsibility Foundation, a 501(c)(3) is dedicated to building it somewhere on America’s West Coast to balance the Statue of Liberty in New York. 

From their website: “Liberty and responsibility are inseperable ideals. Not only is responsibility a necessary condition for a free society to prosper, it will move individuals to aspire to their highest potential.”

Victor was a prisoner of war in a Nazi concentration camp. He taught his fellow prisoners not to live with anger and hate because those emotions just make your life worse. Everyone needs to be responsible for their own emotions.

Tom Mooney

Aspen