While society is responsible for civilizing the individual by engendering such moral values, behavioral norms, culture, and mannerisms, it is in turn the individual's responsibility towards society to uphold and enforce these values. Values, whether presented through cultural tradition, religious dictum, or legal jurisprudence would be irrelevant if they fail to bind individuals in a mutual respect. A society consisting primarily of socially irresponsible individuals would naturally be expected to crumble to its own demise as everyone looks out for their own selfish interest.
Modern societies are obviously much more complex than the simple example undertaken above, and the value sets of moralities extended through culture and tradition are also as intricate. Given a complicated set of social relations and interactions, social responsibility should by no means imply a blind conformity to socially established norms and regulations, a very important facet of social responsibility lies in the individual's own critical assessment of these values in terms of an imagined ideal society in his own mind. It then becomes the individual's responsibility not only to uphold those values which would make this ideal society a real possibility, but also to question those values that contradict the idea of such a society.
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