Well, I imagined it would be pretty much as portrayed in all those happy shiny pictures, only with more tie dye and impromptu concerts and public libraries. I was also looking forward to making friends with all my favorite historical figures (wanted to get George Washington Carver and John Muir in the same room, for instance).
And I assumed that eternal life and eternal good health would allow us to take up new professions like we take up new hobbies today. I was going to master organic farming, then weaving, then glassblowing, then a dozen or so musical instruments, while nibbling away at one foreign language after another. I figured that would occupy about 200 years.
JH:
I imagined that we would be constantly watched incase me make the slightest error.Although living in paradise, it would be a constant combat, not against enemy forces but against our own desires and imperfection.
Not me. Perfection was supposed to do away with all that, right? I assumed that our own, perfected ability to govern our own impulses would make any rule of law unnecessary. I was sure God would give us as big a spiritual jump-start as we required to make Paradise work.
Hmmm - I was looking forward to an anarchist civilization and didn't even know it.
Then the Pharisaism started in earnest, back in the eighties - this was long before I knew about Ray Franz, the Cabeens, or any of the other back-to-the-Bible protestors at Bethel - and the glow began to wear off.
gently feral