'Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a portion of mankind, after nature has long since discharged them from external direction, nevertheless remains under lifelong tutelage, and why it is so easy for others to set themselves up as their guardians.' (Immanuel Kant, 'What is Enlightenment?')

'First World mentality' indeed. As the American fascist war-machine lumbers its way across Iraq, bringing misery to the lives of countless innocent people, we in Malaysia seem more obsessed with stories of sex and personal scandals that are dragged out of the mouldy national closet.

But in the midst of the routinised repression, 'moral policing' and campaigns to uphold 'public decency' by the state, Malaysian society continues its slippery slide towards authoritarianism in the most subtle of ways.

George Orwell's thesis in his book '1984' is as relevant to us today as it ever was, if only some of us would read it.

For we now live in a country where young couples (or even old ones for that matter) caught holding hands in public are deemed a moral nuisance and are regarded as 'indecent' in the eyes of the powers-that-be.