Project 2 Script

Final Project 2 Script

Hey y’all, It’s me, Dillon Dixon. I am a 16 year old junior at Brunswick high school taking Dr. McGinnis’s English composition course. Today I will be writing a script as well as recording a podcast that will be analyzing and also discussing the article Social Justice: Is It in Our Nature (and Our Future)? By John T. Jost, which I found on the American Scientist page.

The main point of this article is to explain social justice and how social justice is a problem in today's society that affects a vast percent of the population. As well as how it may cause conflicts between different groups in society, and how certain groups within a society are mistreated compared to others.

In the introduction of the article, the author John T. Jost states that in recent times the topic of social justice is making a big comeback. Jost cites other articles about social justice and summarises these articles. For instance, he inserted the quote “since the 1980s, some 94 percent of the total increase in personal income has gone to the top 1 percent of the population” from one of the articles. He goes on to give further evidence and examples related to this. He goes as far as saying how human evolution has played a part in how people within a society are viewed and are treated. The author of one of the cited articles, Peter Corning, explains how he believes that the capitalist system as currently practiced in the United States and elsewhere is manifestly unfair. The primary focus of the beginning of jost’s article is that the larger portion of the population is seen as inferior to the top percent of the total population and how even though the top percent makes up less than 10 percent of the population, they still have the most control as well as influence over everyone else.

In the remainder of the article, Jost continues to explain how social justice has affected society. The article talks about a study done on capuchin monkeys. In the study it was noted how the monkeys refused to participate in games where the other monkeys were given greater rewards for doing equal work. This shows how even primates such as the capuchins realize when others within their group are treated differently, and how it affects them. One of the main questions in the article is how has it taken this long for people to realize that there is a problem related to social justice. Jost states “Why have U.S. citizens, for instance, put up with starkly increasing inequality and the kind of economic policies that only a dyslexic Robin Hood could embrace? ”. Jost also includes the joke “Economists have correctly predicted nine of the last five recessions.” by economist Paul A. Samuelson. The great political theorist Ted Robert Gurr, for instance, wrote in 1970 that “Men are quick to aspire beyond their social means and quick to anger when those means prove inadequate, but slow to accept their limitations.”

All in all, the author’s main purpose in writing the article was to shed light on the injustice faced by a large percentage of people in today's society, and how the top percent of the population continues to be a ruling tyrant over everyone else in our society. I have learned a lot from reading this article, and now have a better understanding at quite how vast the problem of social justice truly extends.

Thank you for taking the time to listen to my podcast, and I hope y’all enjoyed, have a great rest of yall’s day.