Contributionism

This is an article written by David Seagrave about Contributionism, which has appeared in the publication Asperger United.

Contributionism: a psychic lifebelt?

I was diagnosed with AS at age 62. As early as age 9, in 1950, I saw a yawning disparity between my parents' religion and the world I was growing into. My parents practised Thomas-the-Tank-Engine Christianity - that is, Christian dogma at a reading age of 7. My short story Saint James the Less has the boy of 10 meet the man I was to become in 1984.

In 1953, I was dared to commit pranks with a sexual content and I was expelled. This inflicted inextirpable irrational guilt which was greatly worsened by chronic unemployment. My father made me out to be flawed from head to toe. My very name stank of abject ignominy. I was sent to Red Hill Remedial School which moulded my character.

Following a narrow escape from a railway accident I had a major row with my father who insisted that God had contrived me to miss the doomed 7:43 from Hastings that was preordained to crash at Hither Green to warn the world that He is in charge. I was so sickened by this claptrap that I should repent and attend Church regularly and go to bed at 9pm sharp! So I created a plausible myth about Alan, aka the Socrates of Charford.

Alan may be the pseudonym of a real old Redhillian. He dares to invent a better code of behaviour than Christian morality after he too misses that 7:43 train in 1967. He too was taught to question the wisdom of our elders, so his brainchild, Contributionism, amounts to a moral Highway Code as logical as arithmetic.

Contributionism incorporates de Chardin's idea that humans are cells in God's brain, so it is possible definable as a religion. In also incorporating the Pelagian heresy, that we do not need to pray to God, and the concept of reincarnation in parallel universes, it is arrant heresy to Christians and has landed me in trouble for expounding its tenets.

When I took up climbing lofty mountains, I underwent a metamorphosis which I describe in many of my literary works. I also underwent convulsive paradigm shifts at Red Hill. When I was maimed I had to redefine myself and a decisive moment was the ascent of Cader Idris with false leg. I call this change of life-perspective "growing dragon's wings". All of us can view society from aloft, so we see through the myths, lies and half-truths forced on us by the people in power.

I would earnestly wish to liberate Neil and all the others, who were squashed in the name of God, by taking them on excursions to the wild beauty in Fife, and teaching them my hobbies. As a young man living in London, every Sunday I went on hikes along then-just-closed railways where I would melt into the landscape and unravel my mind.

Following an assault in my home, I am so traumatised that I want to move to a quiet cathedral city environment, perhaps Dorchester, there to set up exactly the supportive community which Alan operates. If I was to set up a supportive community at Prince Charles's eco-town of Poundbury near Dorchester many Aspies could reach me from London and nearby. Then at last I could play Plato to Alan's Socrates and provide a psychic lifebelt to all.