First Part

    By choosing the column on the left, you have shown me that you want to be responsible. You have hopes of preparing yourself for the future.

    Me, your friend the Computer, cannot be responsible. I am a machine that acts blindly. If I ever disappoint you, do not make me responsible for it. I am not conscious of my own acts. What I mean is that I cannot think about the decision I make nor am I free to choose or implement them.

    But you are! And because you are free and intelligent, you can progress in the virtue of “responsibility”.    You want to know why?

    First of all, I want to explain to you what responsibility is.

    A person is responsible when he or she assumes the consequences of their own acts; when that person responds to the decisions that were personally taken or those taken by others.

    Responsible is a person that compromises up until the last consequences from the decisions taken with their free will; by exercises free will, and thinking beforehand about what could be. It is about thinking before acting and adhering to what will happen. It is about responding your own acts.

  A. Answer the following statements: left, right, the computer, the human being, freely, blindly, free, slave, irresponsible, responsible.

  Second Part

    All of this can be summarized in the following words:
    “Think” before acting.
    “Anticipate” the consequences.
    “Choose” freely.
    “Compromise” with what was decided.
    “Respond”.
    Responsibility moderates the fluctuations of liberty. A responsible person decides by taking “duty” into account. Irresponsibility, on the other hand, decides based on impulses of what it wants or dislikes. The first one uses the head; the second one the instincts.
    The responsible person responds to his or her acts. But to whom?
    To its own conscious; to parents, brothers, friends, colleagues; to professors; to authorities, to society; to God, if believer. It depends on each case.

  B. Answer the following statements: responsible, irresponsible.

  Third Part

   You already have clear ideas. However, you want to educate yourself to be responsible?

    Exercise the following actions:

    * Think, before acting, about the consequences.
    * Consult the decisions to be taken with whom you must.
    * Ask the advice of competent people.
    * Fulfill orders and be accountable for them.
    * Do not blame others for what you have done wrong.
    * Be brave to acknowledge your failures to whom you must.
    * Rectify, immediately, the wrong doings.
    * Repair the damage that you have caused.

    Always act this way, and without noticing, you will progress in the virtue of Responsibility. It is a fundamental virtue in the personality of all men and women.

    An irresponsible person is the one that does not think, does not foresee, does not decide, does not compromise, and does not respond. This person can be all of that at the same time. What a pity!

    (A translation of Don Samuel Valero’s original work.)

  C. Answer the following statements: responsible, irresponsible.