Losing sight of our utopian society. Final Draft.

Author and Journalist Hendrik Willem Van Loon once said, “This world needs Utopias as it needs fairy stories. It does not matter so much where we are going, as long as we are making consciously for some definite goal. And a Utopia, however strange or fanciful, is the only possible beacon upon the uncharted seas of the distant future."

Perhaps its time we start thinking in the past.

Not long ago, it seemed as though Kearney was an excellent place to live and raise a family. It was as close to a utopian society as one could get.

For Generation Y, those of us born between 1970 and 2000, Kearney was seen as a place where nothing truly interesting and newsworthy really happened, yet recently, as in the past decade, the town has been akin to troubles you would see in larger metro areas and on giant movie screens.

Serious issues such as the 2001 Anne Sluti abduction, the 2009 murder of Kelcey Fike, the 2009 robbing of Kmart, the recent hostage crisis at Wells Fargo and the newly developing story about the teenager who, with the aid of his friends, allegedly robbed his 77-year-old grandmother of her pain medication have turned this once quiet town into a feeding ground for the morally dejected.

So what ever happened to the good old days?

Ask any Kearneyite and they will surely tell you, Kearney is a wonderful place to live and has a lot to offer. One can acquire virtually anything they need in order to carry on with their days in a short five-minute drive to the supermarket.

There are movie theaters, parks, bars, a public library and a slew of other places one can go for a good time, so why is it that trouble seems to find its way into our lives, and what can we do to keep it out and restore our utopia?

Society cannot be fixed using a computer or a cell phone, and this may come as the ultimate challenge to us, as our culture has come to terms with a lifestyle that goes along with push-button technology so much so that we tend to forget that it takes us, the people, to fix our problems and society.

It’s about time we took a step back and thought about things with a grass roots approach.
Rather than letting our children run amok whilst we whimsically chat with friends online, we should be spending quality time with them and being there to make sure they live a healthy childhood.

If parents spent more time molding their children and encouraging them, rather than letting them play mindless video games for hours so long as they stay quiet, there would likely be a shift in the crime rates for the better, as most of the crimes we see are being perpetrated by people ranging from young adults to those in their late twenties.

Not to say that it’s the video games fault, but more so the lax upbringing that children are receiving these days.

People have become dependant on technology to a point that it has become a necessity rather than a luxury, and that needs to change if we are to usher in a new generation of moral beings to inhabit this town and make it the place it once was when we were young…our own personal Mayberry.

It would be easy to look to the recession as a scapegoat for all the recent headlines that have shocked our town into a state of fear, but the blame could more squarely be placed on our own shoulders, and its about time we do something about it.