(Un)blissful Ignorance

by Elisa Uccello

As a child, growing up in the parched Midwest of Brazil, I was surrounded by a very convincing illusion of progress.

Over half of the Brazilian population is black, so it’s weird how few of my parents’ colleagues were black though they worked at a public institution as large as the National Central Bank. Conversations about homophobia happened occasionally in my household; coincidentally the topic always came up right before a gay cousin or friend came to visit. My mother, a proud feminist, always talked to my sister and me about how we had to work to become economically independent and never submit to a man’s idea of us. When I said a bad word, she would tell me that’s not how a lady should act.

As the years go by, we want to expect tomorrow to be better, more equal, more just than today. Yet, 2 and a half years ago, I found myself sitting motionless in front of the television. It only took the two seconds the reporter needed to pronounce the name of the winner of the presidential race for my country to regress half a century.

"As the old saying goes, ignorance is bliss. So how blissful my home country must be"

After 12 years of corruption scandals dominating the news, the population was anything but happy with the governing party. Therefore, as the 2018 elections approached, most of the people I knew seemed pretty convicted about who they were going to support. These people, I must add, are educated, middle to high-class Brazilians who have traveled to numerous countries, and have access to any and all news services, books, television programs, and media outlets.

Yet they elected a man named Jair Bolsonaro for the presidency of one of the biggest countries in the world. 58 million votes. 58 million people left their houses, went to a voting booth, and selected this man to be their leader.

As the old saying goes, ignorance is bliss. So how blissful my home country must be.

“She is not worth raping; she is very ugly. Not my type."

“I would be incapable of loving my son if he was homosexual. I would prefer my son died in a car accident than showed up with some bloke with a mustache.”

“If I see two men kissing each other on the street, I’ll beat them up.”

“I’m in favor of torture, you know that.”

“My son wouldn’t fall in love with a black woman. I don’t run that risk because my sons were very well educated.”

“I’m sorry for the dead (victims of COVID-19), I’m sorry. But we’re all going to die one day, everyone here will die. There’s no point running away from it, running away from reality. You need to stop being a country of fagg*ts.”

All of these words came out of the mouth of a man that now serves as the executive chief of a country with over two hundred million people. A country with unparalleled natural beauty, with a warm and welcoming culture, with renowned parties, brilliant art, delicious food, incredible diversity, and unlimited potential. But plagued by ignorance.

"There are moments when we must let ourselves feel others’ pains"

The question I asked myself as I sat in front of the TV all these months ago is the same I’ve asked myself every day since Bolsonaro was elected: Why? Why did these 60 million people vote for him? Why aren’t they bothered enough by his claims? And this is not just Brazil. Despite the misfortune that my country is facing, discrimination exists everywhere. It is an issue everywhere. We have an optimistic tendency to look at it in a relative manner, always comparing how it is now to how it was in the past, or how it is here to how it is in poorer countries, but this relativity builds an illusion.

I don’t think all the people who voted for Bolsonaro are as racist, sexist, homophobic, and overall hateful as he is. I think most of them are simply ignorant. Ignorance isn’t simply a lack of knowledge, but a lack of acknowledgment. We know there are billions of people that have nothing to eat, we know of the deaths of people of color who have done nothing wrong, we know that young girls are being raped and then called liars in court, we know there are gay kids being kicked out of their homes because of dogmatic parents. We have knowledge of a lot of misery that we don’t have to face. And although it is true that to acknowledge this misery all the time does nothing but make us guilty of everything we have that others don’t, there are moments when we need to sit with it. There are moments when we must let ourselves feel others’ pains. Because if we don’t, progress will forever remain an illusion.

As the old saying goes, ignorance is bliss. But it is also an antonym of all of that which makes us worthy of our praised benevolence. So let us choose awareness over false bliss. Let us choose compassion over comfort.

There is no other way forward. This is not about Brazil. It is about humanity.

by Anonymous

Genre: Fiction, Mystery, Thriller

First line: “I forget everything between footsteps.”

Stars: So many. All the good mystery stars and dark haunted house stars. Also some characters stars with old family secret stars.

There’s nothing like reading a book that you can’t put down. When a story unfolds just right, drawing you in so well you forget any time has passed before it's late and you’re convincing yourself to read just one more chapter anyway. I just finished a book exactly like that. It’s called “The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle” by Stuart Turton, and if you’re looking for something seasonally scary to read around Halloween, it’s a great bet.

I’ve read a lot of murder mystery stories, and I think I’ve gotten pretty adept at breaking down the tropes that always seem to come back. Chances are the story is set in a grand old house, somewhere remote with oil lamps, suspicious butlers and guests that all know each other’s secrets and dark pasts.

Then someone dies and there’s just one bit of evidence at the crime scene that doesn’t make any sense. Undoubtedly somebody is having an affair and people don’t turn out to be who they say they are. Finally, the murderer is revealed, and almost every time it’s about money or love, or both.

But I’ve never read anything like this.

This book opens with someone who doesn’t remember why he’s scurrying through the undergrowth of a forest chasing a shadowy figure. He’s so frazzled he doesn’t know who he is anymore, and here’s the thing, he’s not actually himself, or rather, it’s not his own body he’s inhabiting. Yes, this is a 1920s style, body hopping, eerily twisty murder mystery story, and you’re not ready.

The protagonist soon learns his real name is Aiden Bishop, and that he’s at Blackheath house for a reason. At 11pm, Evelyn Hardcastle, the daughter of the strangely absent hosts, is going to be murdered in front of a ballroom of people, and it’s up to him to save her. Here’s the catch: he’s going to be reliving the day this happens over and over, waking up in the body of a different guest each time. The only way to escape is to solve the murder, and bring the answer to a mysterious masked figure: who killed Evelyn, and why?If he doesn't manage to do this on the seventh day, the time loop will start over, and his memories will be wiped.