On March 31st, I travelled to a bookstore in Boulder, Colorado to observe a discussion about peace and justice. When I got there, all I found was an empty table. Did I miss the meeting? Why is no one here? Surely peace and justice themselves cannot be as empty as this table. I then realized the message being sent is how peace and justice cannot coexist equally at any moment in time. The meeting failed because one cannot have equal representation of peace and justice at the same time because they are opposites. This failure by opposites conveys the most powerful message that can ever be sent. This message is silence. Through the failure of the meeting along with the message of silence sent by absence, peace and justice are shown in a new true light within society.
Peace and justice can rarely coexist. In any situation of discourse there is the choice between peace or justice. This shows how peace and justice are opposites. Even though in modern society they are often placed together. This is represented in the clips showing marriage. However, it is actually impossible to be fighting for both peace and justice. Most people assert that peace and justice is a marriage because if someone (Jack) does something bad. Jack then goes to court and get sentenced and is removed from society. This creates the peace that people most commonly think about. The problem however is much more cloudy if a group of people do something considered bad. Consider terrorists for example. Peace between terrorists and non-terrorists would be for each one to get what they want. Justice between terrorists and non-terrorists is for one to succeed over the other and then the justice is defined by the winning side. By these definitions, peace and justice seem similar but are also substantially different. Peace implies co-existing compromise, justice implies power over the other. By this discourse peace and justice cannot exist equally within any society.
Another difference between peace and justice is that justice is an opinion. One individual may think one action is the appropriate response. Another individual would have a different and perhaps opposite response. This is also represented by the terrorist vs. non-terrorist example. The terrorist’s justice would be killing all the non-believers. The non-terrorist’s justice would be to rid the world of extremists who believe it is their power to rid the world of opposing views. Therefore it is the people themselves on each side who have the power to influence a change toward more justice or more peace. The discourse is within society itself. Although opposites, justice can possibly lead to short span of peace. This is represented by the Jack example. Jack goes away then peace follows. However, peace does not prevail forever because sooner or later another problem will arise where justice would be needed. This suggests that there is an illusion of equilibrium between peace and justice when actually it is each situation rapidly fluctuating between the two. Peace and justice is actually a cycle where one leads to the other. The meeting did not happen because the core purpose of the meeting itself is contradictory. The meeting failed because peace and justice cannot coexist equally in society, therefore the meeting about peace and justice cannot exist in society.
Though the meeting itself did not happen because of its core contradiction, it still sent a message. That message is the very powerful message of silence. At first this silence means nothing, as in nothing happened because nothing existed. But is this what silence really means? Well silence means there is nothing to be said. This could prove how the meeting can not exist, or it could prove a more powerful message that any words could ever convey. The latter is true because historically silence has been used as a tool to influence change and thought. This is shown in my clips though the pictures of dead bodies and such. An example showing the power of silence is the infamous picture on the “tank man” or also known as “the unknown rebel.” This is the man who stood in front of a column of tanks in Tiananman Square in 1989. He simply stood there blocking the tanks. His existence at that position was enough to stop the tanks, not words. Another example of this are silent marches. The most moving marches can be silent marches because it makes you actually think about what they want instead of listening to them shout it at you. Both of these examples show the power of silence in provoking thought and illustrating the true message being sent. The influence of the silence makes one think harder about why the meeting would not happen. The truth of the message sent by silence at the bookstore meeting about peace and justice is how such meeting cannot be held in a bookstore. Peace and justice is held within the world on the streets and in the buildings of power. That is where one should look to find peace and justice. This is because peace and justice are all around us. They cannot be syphoned out of society and placed into a bookstore meeting. It is in every person, in every action. The silence shown at the failed meeting shows this.
Peace and justice cannot coexist in society at equal levels at the same time. There will always be either more peace or more justice for each situation. The rhetorical artifact of this theme succeeds and fails. The theme fails by showing how peace and justice cannot coexist equally. But though that failure it inspires activism to try and make it so. The message is that what you search for cannot be found here. One must go find it. In this aspect the artifact succeeds.
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