Social structures like close extended families that once constrained behavior have weakened even as widespread affluence has democratized overindulgence.

By forcing a better balance between commerce and nature, it has often constrained human behavior in ways that lead to a healthier environment for everyone.

These incidents, he said in an interview Wednesday, reflect a "reckless abandon," and "a carelessness" that, he said, permits many youngsters to throw off inhibitions that have traditionally constrained adolescent behavior.

In the battle of the sexes, there are the formal rules - the rich variety of variously heeded laws and customs by which each society tries to constrain reproductive behavior.

The building blocks of morality are not nice or good behaviors but rather mental and social capacities for constructing societies "in which shared values constrain individual behavior through a system of approval and disapproval."

But human culture has always usefully constrained human behavior as well as expressed it.

That usually means constraining human behavior in ways that help preserve a healthier environment all around.

Any action to constrain Chinese behavior can be rationalized as harmful to the larger goal of drawing China into international relationships that may moderate the Government in Beijing, he said.

Constraints (also called "action assertions") Every enterprise constrains behavior in some way, and this is closely related to constraints on what data may or may not be updated.

Efforts to constrain human behavior to protect wildlife inevitably provoke debate and complaint, never more so than when the wildlife in question is delicious.