Jophin Mathai
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jofmat.bsky.social
Jophin Mathai
@jofmat.bsky.social
310 followers 280 following 690 posts
philanthropy, education, social mobility, careers, social change | I read, write, listen
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jofmat.bsky.social
One of my favourites: an important, critical intervention by Tania Murray Li, particularly salient in these times.

If imminent development is failing, what must come ‘after development’?

ideas.repec.org/a/bla/devchg...
"If huge numbers of people are, in fact, not going to be able to sustain themselves through productive work—or not in conditions other than deprivation and bare survival — what comes next? After imminent development must be —can only be —a politics of distribution: a struggle over who will have access to a share of global wealth and income, on what grounds, and who will be excluded." (Tania Murray Li, After Development: Surplus Population and the Politics of Entitlement)
December 19, 2025 at 2:17 PM
jofmat.bsky.social
"The relational aspect of human powers suggests that our relations with others are really important for determining our individual and collective powers. Who and what we connect and relate to, and how we do so, profoundly affects what we can do and become."
"The relational aspect of human powers suggests that our relations with others are really important for determining our individual and collective powers. Who and what we connect and relate to, and how we do so, profoundly affects what we can do and become." (Paul Raekstad and Sofia Saio Gradin, Prefigurative Politics)
December 18, 2025 at 2:14 AM
jofmat.bsky.social
Someone please tell me this is AI.
Photo of football players Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez doing a puja with Anant Ambani and Radhika Ambani.
December 17, 2025 at 8:19 AM
jofmat.bsky.social
“…your individual metabolism is mediated by a complex system of infrastructures, data, machines, financial flows, and planetary supply chains."

- Søren Mau, Mute Compulsion
"Living all of your life staring into a smartphone in a megacity and eating prepared fast food without ever knowing where it comes from and how it is produced does not mean that some holy bond between you and nature has been broken; it just means that your individual metabolism is mediated by a complex system of infrastructures, data, machines, financial flows, and planetary supply chains." (Søren Mau, Mute Compulsion)
December 16, 2025 at 4:23 PM
jofmat.bsky.social
‘The Fever’ by Wallace Shawn is such a masterpiece.

One of my favourite parts, packed with interlinked concepts: charity, meritocracy, ownership, freedom.

wischik.com/lu/senses/fe...
"I *have* beliefs. There's a *reason* why I won't give the beggar all of my money. Yes, I'm going to give her *some* of it—I always give away quite a surprising amount to people who have less than I do— But there's a reason why *I'm* the one who *has* the money in the *first* place, and *that's* why I'm not going to give it all away. In other words, for God's sake, I *worked* for that money. I worked hard. I worked. I worked. I worked hard to make that money, and it's my money, because I made it. I made the money, and so I have it, and I can spend it any way I like. This is the basis of our entire lives." (Wallace Shawn, The Fever)
December 14, 2025 at 1:30 PM
jofmat.bsky.social
Clean air is de facto commodified in the Delhi region.

You get the air you can afford. The massive inequality ensures only a few ‘merit’ healthy breathing.

When it comes to air, policymaking itself has been emancipated. Don’t hold your breath for good governance.
Air Quality Index of 688, considered ‘Hazardous’.
December 13, 2025 at 5:19 PM
jofmat.bsky.social
Book 17: Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy

Glad that I came to this with the fresh memory of ‘The God of Small Things’. I haven’t read many memoirs—I believe the good ones help you witness your own life and its ‘characters’ in a fresh light. Roy’s memoir did that for me.
"My commitment was to writing. To being a writer, not a leader or an activist. To do that I could not be weighed down by the burden of a “following,” or of fulfilling people’s expectations. I had to have the right to be unpopular. I had to have the choice of probing the boundaries of acceptability, of not fitting in, of standing alone." (Arundhati Roy, Mother Mary Comes to Me)
December 13, 2025 at 7:28 AM
jofmat.bsky.social
Book 16: Being Peace by Thich Nhat Hanh

In his lifetime, Hanh grappled with peace work amidst incredible violence. For him, to “be peace” is both a personal practice and the foundation for any meaningful action for the world. Worth seriously considering Hanh’s version of ‘engaged Buddhism’.
If you are aware of what is going on, then you can see problems as they unfold, and you can help prevent many of lem. When things explode, it is too late. How we deal with our daily lives is the most important question. How we deal with our feelings, our speaking, with ordinary things every day is just meditation. We must learn to apply meditation in our daily lives. Being Peace Thich Nhat Hanh We must practice in a way that removes the barrier between practice and non-practice. Being Peace Thich Nhat Hanh I am, therefore you are. You are, therefore I am. That is the meaning of the word "interbeing." We interare. Being Peace Thich Nhat Hanh
December 13, 2025 at 7:19 AM
jofmat.bsky.social
"Craft enables art."
"A skill is something you know how to do. Skill in writing frees you to write what you want to write. It may also show you what you want to write. Craft enables art." (Ursula K. Le Guin, Steering the Craft)
December 12, 2025 at 12:50 PM
jofmat.bsky.social
Book 15: Abscond by Abraham Varghese

An aphoristic novella with textures one can expect from Varghese: grief, fate, faith, desire, among other shades.
"Tennis, school, Sheryl McGilicutty’s coochie outlined by a wet bikini—these were all big nothings in a world that could snatch a father away so cruelly, so prematurely." (Abraham Verghese, Abscond) "there’s an old Scottish saying my ma was fond of. What’s for you won’t go by you. I thought it was daft when I was young. But with every passing year, I see it’s the truth.”" (Abraham Verghese, Abscond)
November 27, 2025 at 12:45 PM
jofmat.bsky.social
Book 14: Em and the Big Hoom by Jerry Pinto

When I wasn’t chuckling, I had a lump in my throat. It hit close to home. Through vignettes, letters, and darkly humorous dialogue, the book explores mental illness, caregiving, stigma, and coming-of-age. Bless you, Mr. Pinto.
"Love is never enough. Madness is enough. It is complete, sufficient unto itself. You can only stand outside it, as a woman might stand outside a prison in which her lover is locked up. From time to time, a well-loved face will peer out and love floods back. A scrap of cloth flutters and it becomes a sign and a code and a message and all that you want it to be. Then it vanishes and you are outside the dark tower again." (Jerry Pinto, Em and the Big Hoom) "Mad is an everyday, ordinary word. It is compact. It fits into songs. As the old Hindi film song has it, M-A-D, mad mane paagal. It can become a phrase—‘Maddaw-what?’ which began life as ‘Are you mad or what?’. It can be everything you choose it to be: a mad whirl, a mad idea, a mad March day, a mad heiress, a mad mad mad mad world, a mad passion, a mad hatter, a mad dog. But it is different when you have a mad mother. Then the word wakes up from time to time and blinks at you, eyes of fire. But only sometimes, for we used the word casually ourselves, children of a mad mother. There is no automatic gift that arises out of such a circumstance. If sensitivity or gentleness came with such a genetic load, there would be no old people in mental homes." (Jerry Pinto, Em and the Big Hoom)
November 27, 2025 at 12:45 PM
jofmat.bsky.social
Book 13: A Primer on Utopian Philosophy by Jon Greenaway

This is a good primer on Ernst Bloch and more generally, utopian thinking.

Utopia is a disciplined practice of hope, not wishful thinking. It contests the belief that ‘there is no alternative’.

There always is an alternative.
"Things can seem so bleak, history so empty of content, the shock of the New such a distant memory that the possibility of some radical break or rupture towards the Utopian (or even just for the better) can all too easily simply come off as naive optimism. However, Bloch’s point about nonsynchronicity shows us that the past is in some way still with us, we live in its ruins and from those ruins the future is not something enforced by teleological systems but is something made and remade too." (Jonathan Greenaway, A Primer on Utopian Philosophy) "Material reality is not something simply given, and as such, Utopia is fundamental to the unfinished nature of existence. As Bloch put it himself: there is no realism worthy of the name, which abstracts from this strongest element in reality as something which is unfinished." (Jonathan Greenaway, A Primer on Utopian Philosophy)
November 25, 2025 at 1:54 PM
jofmat.bsky.social
Book 12: Mad About Cuba by Ullekh NP

As a Malayali, I just couldn’t resist. This is a delightful read!
Cover of the book 'Mad About Cuba' by Ullekh NP.
November 25, 2025 at 1:54 PM
jofmat.bsky.social
Book 11: We Survived the End of the World by Steven Charleston

Charleston draws on Native American prophetic tradition to show how communities have faced world-ending catastrophes and endured. ‘Apocalypses’ demand a life-affirming reorientation in our relationships to the earth and to each other.
"In Greek, the word derives from apokaluptein, which means to “uncover” or “reveal.” Originally the word meant a vision of the future, a revelation about what was to come." (Steven Charleston, We Survived the End of the World) "We live in an atmosphere of apocalypse. Remember that apocalypse is two things: an actual event and a revelation. Together, these two aspects combine into what we call the apocalyptic process." (Steven Charleston, We Survived the End of the World) "We are the axis point of apocalypse. The degree to which we participate in the apocalyptic process can tip the scales and determine the outcome. Therefore, our greatest problem is not necessarily the event itself but our reaction to it." (Steven Charleston, We Survived the End of the World)
November 25, 2025 at 1:54 PM
jofmat.bsky.social
On the ‘Epstein class’, the role of power brokers, and staying in sync with ruling ideas. Great piece by @anandwrites.bsky.social
Snippet from opinion piece: How did Mr. Epstein manage to pull so many strangers close? The emails reveal a barter economy of nonpublic information that was a big draw. This is not a world where you bring a bottle of wine to dinner and that's it. You bring what financiers call "edge" — proprietary insight, inside information, a unique takeaway from a conference, a counterintuitive prediction about A.l., a snippet of conversation with a lawmaker, a foretaste of tomorrow's news.
November 24, 2025 at 6:39 AM
jofmat.bsky.social
Book 10: One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad

Omar’s book is remarkable because for how it uses language as a mirror to reveal the duplicity of power. He points to the heart of business as usual that fuels life as usual.
"Beyond the high walls and barbed wire and checkpoints that pen this place, there is the empire. And the empire as well is cocooned inside its own fortress of language—a language through the prism of which buildings are never destroyed but rather spontaneously combust, in which blasts come and go like Chinooks over the mountain, and people are killed as though to be killed is the only natural and rightful ordering of their existence. As though living was the aberration." (Omar el Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This) "Once far enough removed, everyone will be properly aghast that any of this was allowed to happen. But for now, it’s just so much safer to look away, to keep one’s head down, periodically checking on the balance of polite society to see if it is not too troublesome yet to state what to the conscience was never unclear." (Omar el Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This)
November 23, 2025 at 7:48 AM
jofmat.bsky.social
Book 9: A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

A book with two narrators separated across generations. It is a meditation on time, attention, and interconnectedness.

(I loved Ozeki’s other book, ‘The Form of Being and Emptiness’)
"Then is the opposite of now. So saying now obliterates its meaning, turning it into exactly what it isn’t. It’s like the word is committing suicide or something. So then I’d start making it shorter . . . now, ow, oh, o . . . until it was just a bunch of little grunting sounds and not even a word at all. It was hopeless, like trying to hold a snowflake on your tongue or a soap bubble between your fingertips. Catching it destroys it, and I felt like I was disappearing, too." (Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being) "If Zen Master Dōgen had been a physicist, I think he might have liked quantum mechanics. He would have naturally grasped the all-inclusive nature of superposition and intuited the interconnectedness of entanglement. As a contemplative who was also a man of action, he would have been intrigued by the notion that attention might have the power to alter reality, while at the same time understanding that human consciousness is neither more nor less than the clouds and water, or the hundreds of grasses. He would have appreciated the unbounded nature of not knowing." (Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being)
November 23, 2025 at 7:48 AM
jofmat.bsky.social
Book 8: The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

I have fond memories of Kerala: a boyhood of collecting rubber milk to turn them into sheets, playing in rivers with my cousins, the fish nibbling at my skin, among other things. This year, I spent quality time there with this gem of a book.
Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Imbued with new meaning. Suddenly they become the bleached bones of a story. The God of Small Things Arundhati Roy "We're Prisoners of War," Chacko said. "Our dreams have been doctored. We belong nowhere. We sail unanchored on troubled seas. We may never be allowed ashore. Our sorrows will never be sad enough. Our joys never happy enough. Our dreams never big enough. Our lives never important enough. To matter."
November 19, 2025 at 8:11 AM
jofmat.bsky.social
Book 7: Empire of Normality by
Robert Chapman

The pathology paradigm and capitalist logics reinforce each other to produce ‘disability’: differences become individual deficits rather than relational mismatches with environments. The book traces the history and dynamics of this reinforcement.
part of what I seek to show is that while capitalist societies have allowed some degree of mobility regarding social class, this has only meant that domination shifts more towards neurodivergence rather than diminishing overall. This, I argue, undermines the last promise of capitalism, which purports to help us approach a meritocracy where free individuals are valued not by their inherited status but by their virtues and how hard they work. Empire of Normality Robert Chapman Part of what follows from adopting a neurodiversity paradigm lens is the recognition that mental functioning and thus production emerges from our neurological diversity at the group level. No human is capable of doing much alone, or is wholly independent, and everything we do relies to varying extents on people who think differently having produced at least some part of what each of us uses. Empire of Normality Robert Chapman
November 19, 2025 at 8:11 AM
jofmat.bsky.social
Book 6: Walk the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan

This is a collection of Irish short stories that reveal seismic inner lives. Like the most gifted writers, Keegan is a literary witness who makes ‘ordinary’ lives spectacular, as they truly are.
Weddings are hard. The drink flows and the words come out and he has to be there. A man loses his daughter to a younger man. A woman sees her son throwing himself away on a lesser woman. It is something they half believe. There's the expense, the sentiment, the no going back. Any time promises are made in public, people cry. Walk the Blue Fields Claire Keegan Judge is glad he cannot speak. He has never understood the human compulsion for conversation: people, when they speak, say useless things that seldom if ever improve their lives. Their words make them sad. Why can't they stop talking and embrace each other? Walk the Blue Fields Claire Keegan
November 19, 2025 at 8:11 AM
jofmat.bsky.social
Book 5: The Vegetarian by Han Kang

The protagonist abruptly decides to stop eating meat after a disturbing dream. With this premise, Kang explores social norms, patriarchal control, and the fragility of identity.
"The feeling that she had never really lived in this world caught her by surprise. It was a fact. She had never lived. Even as a child, as far back as she could remember, she had done nothing but endure. She had believed in her own inherent goodness, her humanity, and lived accordingly, never causing anyone harm. Her devotion to doing things the right way had been unflagging, all her success had depended on it, and she would have gone on like that indefinitely. She didn’t understand why, but faced with those decaying buildings and straggling grasses, she was nothing but a child who had never lived." (Han Kang, The Vegetarian)
November 18, 2025 at 3:44 PM
jofmat.bsky.social
Book 4: Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

My first Rooney, and I get the buzz. I deeply appreciate how attentively she explores class tensions, freedom and identity in her fiction.
"How often in his life he has found himself a frustrated observer of apparently impenetrable systems, watching other people participate effortlessly in structures he can find no way to enter or even understand. So often that it’s practically baseline, just normal existence for him. And this is not only due to the irrational nature of other people, and the consequent irrationality of the rules and processes they devise; it’s due to Ivan himself, his fundamental unsuitedness to life." (Sally Rooney, Intermezzo) "say if you take the example of a teacher, they go into work every day and like, teach children to read. The school isn’t making any profit, obviously, because it’s free to go there. But I think we all agree, the children should learn to read, so we better pay someone to teach them. Since that person needs to eat, and so on. If we organise everything in view of profit, we get things happening in the economy that make no sense...Like in this example, no one has a direct profit motive for teaching children, but the whole economy will collapse if people can’t read. You get the same problem with infrastructure, and all kinds of things." (Sally Rooney, Intermezzo)
November 18, 2025 at 3:44 PM
jofmat.bsky.social
Book 3: The Revolution Will Not Be Funded by Incite!

Published in 2007, and while situated in the US context, the themes and critiques explored in this book continue to be globally relevant today. Necessary reading esp for those in the nonprofit sector.

#civilsociety #philanthropy #nonprofit
"More insidious than the raw structural constraints exerted by the foundation/state/non-profit nexus is the way in which this new industry grounds an epistemology—literally, a way of knowing social change and resistance praxis—that is difficult to escape or rupture." (Incite!, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded) "Individuals who have dedicated their lives to working for social and economic justice need a major paradigm shift and recognize that foundation money, often the result of exploited wealth, is public money." (Incite!, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded) "Annanya Bhattacharjee has offered important insight on how political formations within the NPIC become defenders of the status quo. For example, in Bhattacharjee’s address during the 2004 conference The Revolution Will Not be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, she remarked on these __attributes of the NPIC: the non-profit structure is predicated on a corporate structure and hierarchy that rewards “bourgeois credentials” and “upward mobility”; the non-profit model makes it easier for young economically privileged people just coming out of college to start a non-profit than to engage in long-term established movements; the model is obsessed with institution building rather than organizing; and it forces social justice activists to become more accountable to funders than to our communities.__" (Incite!, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded)
November 18, 2025 at 3:44 PM
jofmat.bsky.social
Book 2: The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

With unwavering intellectual honesty, Coates confronts some oppressive myths and connects the dots between literature, power, and politics.
"Oppressive power is preserved in the smoke and fog, and sometimes it is smuggled in the unexamined shadows of the language of the oppressed themselves." (Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message) "A literature fueled by a profound human experience must necessarily burn at a high flame, and thus a “material handicap” is transformed into a “spiritual advantage,” putting in the hands of the oppressed “the conditions of a classical art,” which is to say the power to haunt people, to move people, and expand the brackets of humanity. This is as true for those laboring under the shadow of enslavement as it is for those laboring under the shadow of apartheid." (Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message) "Politics is the art of the possible, but art creates the possible of politics." (Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message)
November 18, 2025 at 3:44 PM
jofmat.bsky.social
Book 1: Human Acts by Han Kang

Based on a event in Gwangju in South Korea, this book is a stunning literary reflection on violence and trauma and the threads that bind them together with humanity, its shells and echoes.
"It wasn’t as though we didn’t know how overwhelmingly the army outnumbered us. But the strange thing was, it didn’t matter. Ever since the uprising began, I’d felt something coursing through me, as overwhelming as any army. Conscience. Conscience, the most terrifying thing in the world." (Han Kang, Human Acts)
November 18, 2025 at 3:44 PM