What If Lee Kwan Yew Were A Pessimist?

Whenever I think, "Screw it!  The Philippines is hopeless!  Screw my ancestors for leaving China for the Philippines instead of America!", I always thought about how Singapore wasn't always Singapore.  In fact, you might want to call it Stinkapore because it was a war-ravaged poor country that just gained its independence from Malaysia.  Whenever I feel like the Philippines is hopeless and when I look at the legacy of Lee Kwan Yew, I thought. "Screw it!  What if Lee Kwan Yew was a pessimist?"

When Lee Kwan Yew took over Singapore, the entire city was so poor and ravaged.  I guess people back then had no discipline.  But instead of being the pessimist, what did he do?  He decided it was time to fix problems such as crime rate, poverty, unemployment and corruption.  He did not care about popularity and what he wanted was for Singapore to rise up.  From 1965 to 1990, he started to implement new policies such as caning against certain offenses.  He was raising an economic, social and cultural revolution which he would not do if he were a pessimist.

If Lee Kwan Yew were a pessimist, I don't think Singapore would be Singapore, it would still deserve to be called Stinkapore.  Maybe, Singapore wouldn't be the progressive island state that would manage to succeed in spite of a scarcity of natural sources for export.  It might still be a city of rampant crime and corruption.  Whenever I think about his legacy though it had its mistakes, I think that being a pessimist is definitely a no-no because hard work must be accompanied by optimism not pessimism.