Gwynne Nettler

Gwynne Nettler FRSC (also often spelled Gwynn Nettler; 1913 – October 5, 2007) was a Canadian sociologist, psychologist, and movie stuntman who taught at the University of Alberta from 1963 to 1978. Quotes The moral movement that is shifting the burden of responsibility is represented by . . . the death of traditional justifications . . . The new mythology sees entities called the Establishment, the Power Structure, Society (with capital S) and of course, the System as the origin of goods and evils, of the causes of our conduct, and hence, as "responsible" to and for us. The logic that attributes blame to the System reduces the responsibility of the individual enmeshed in it . . . The demise of traditional justifications and the birth of new ones have been assisted by the burgeoning of the behavioral sciences . . . The behavioral sciences have helped shift the load of responsibility from individuals to environments. Their message allocates responsibility for conduct to causes beyond the control of the actor. He is seen as a product . . . interacting with his rearing (which he could not have arranged) and realized through the opportunities provided or denied to him by his place in a "social structure" in which, without election, he found himself . . . Modern morality attributes behavior to circumstance; it thereby converts sin to sickness and erases fault. Its working hypothesis is that, if behavior is caused, its agent is not culpable. "Shifting the Load", American Behavioral Scientist (January-February), pp. 372-373. Quoted in Paul Hollander, "Sociology, Selective Determinism, and the Rise of Expectations", The American Sociologist, vol. 8 no. 4 (1973), p. 148 External links Category:1913 births Category:2007 deaths Category:Sociologists from Canada