Last night I dreamed I was playing with George, a cat I used to have. I can't seem to find a photo of George, but he looked somewhat like this:
George was being very affectionate and purring a lot, just like he did in real life. But then he went to my laptop, pushed a few keys and showed me how to switch from one to another of the infinite number of universes which exist according to some theories of physics.
In real life he NEVER did that.
As soon as he touched the keyboard with his paws, we began to communicate telepathically, and I now also understood how to use my laptop to "browse" universes, as it were.
The universes ranged from horrific to boring to wondrous. We found one in which cats were flying around everywhere in little cat-sized flying cars. The humans were all artists and scientists, and the distinction between artists and scientist which had begun in Earth's Western civilization in late Renaissance did not exist. Finance existed only as the means of equitably providing an abundance to all sentient beings. Burning things as a source of energy, and war, were in the very distant past. It was a lot like "Star Trek"s version of Earth, except with many more cats in tiny flying cars.
George was understandably eager to try one of those kittycat-cars, and away he zoomed, but he was back again before lunch, more affectionate than ever. The two of us became a well-known sight, mostly together, sometimes with George walking beside me, sometime with him luxuriously stretched out across my shoulders, so relaxed that he often fell asleep there. Before long George was working as an information technologist and I was a well-known poet.
Neither of us was in any particular hurry to get back to Earth.
To repeat: the science-humanities split so familiar to us did not exist. Exhibitions, lectures, conferences, projects couldn't have been identified as one or the other, as STEM or humanities. The widespread disdain for one half of intellectual and aesthetic achievement, or the other, did not exist. It was as everyday and accepted for a mathematician or physician, in presenting their latest findings, to refer to a famous painting or opera, as for a book of cultural history to include differential equations. George and I, coming from Earth, described Earth's science-humanities split as being as if cats and humans could not telecommunicate with each other.
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