Mentacalm

When the mind has been brought to rest, then the Self stands in its own nature.
All mental disturbances derive from the ego's hopes, fears,loves, hates, desires,aversions, anxieties and insecurities.

So Self cannot be isolated and discovered until these distorting influences have been put to rest.

Putting them to rest requires that one traces them to their roots, understands them and ceases to fear them

Bureaucratic answer to corruption --- Right or Wrong?

The bureaucratic answer to corruption lies in laws,rules restrictions,inspections, audits, inquiries,penalties and punishments. The administration is less concerned with the principle of honesty. It controls through fear,not by arousing the citizens' eager cooperation in the mutual ordering of society. To the bureaucrat it seems easier to issue orders backed by threats than to work by example. He seldom looks to the root of the problems but is content if the symptoms of social malaise are contained by force.

Being Independent

Nirmala, an Indian woman, came from a family of many brothers and sisters. She resented the gender discrimination, common to the social orthodoxy of the time, which gave considerable freedom to the boys to move about as they pleased,whereas the girls had to stay at home except when they went out with parents. Nirmala wished she had been born a boy.

At some point in her youth, she learned about an Indian woman artist who, by virtue of her profession, lived an independent life, and she fantasized that she would become an artist and be independent. To this end she learned to paint, but she could not stop her father from marrying her off in the conventional fashion. However, her husband's circumstances permitted her the leisure to continue painting, and she achieved a certain competence.

                                            Did she become independent?
                                                   She doesn't think so!!!

Pessimism --- Good or bad?

It is not that optimism is good and pessimism is bad. Both are functional and have value. It is mostly impossible for an average person to approach life and its every day situations with a neutral state of being. One is either tackling a situation with an inherent sense of pessimism or is surging ahead with optimism. What has changed is the way successful people often employ pessimism in a strategic way to motivate and prepare themselves for the future. It is not that optimism is not a perfect state. But the more ideal way to deal with things is  acknowledge every emotion,:accept what is and move from there.

The smart ones  manipulate pessimism in their favor At times it prepares you  for cautionary measures..

We are all trying to chase optimism  but then pessimism has also values At times we need to accept whatever happens in life.

Society upgradation

There is a simple answer to the problems of a corrupt society.
Every man who wishes to rectify the state of affairs must regulate his own life according to the standards of truth, honesty and unselfishness which he believes should control the whole society. He cannot control the whole society; he can control only himself.

It will operate by the power of example and with the spread of ripples from such individual action it is expected that the whole of society will be upgraded.