Social Values and Good Living

Social values are defined as standards, which individuals and social groups employ to define personal goals and essentially shape the nature and form of social order in a collective i.e., what is acceptable and not acceptable, what ought or not to be and what is desirable.
The pursuit of well-being and good living is an integral part of human existence. Efforts to articulate how this is achievable can be traced back to the 6th–7th B.C.E., when Homer, Aristotle, Cicero, and Virgil inquired about the means and goals of human nature that would bring people closer to happiness. Informed by the social, political, and economic transformations of their time, they proposed that bravery, conformity to the laws of the city, hard work, honesty, nobility, reason, and participation in the public affairs were values that encapsulated the good life.