When Power Equals Forgetfulness

I recently saw the film 'Philomena' and enjoyed it
at many levels. It was much more than 'an entertainment'.
One thought it left me with was how records are kept
of people's lives;the longer and deeper a person
is institutionalised the more complex the records
of their 'being kept' become, the less the kept know
of what their keepers write about them. All to keep
to the rules, until finally the inmate is bound by
the opacity of the rules by which they are looked after.

With a lot of help some people get better, and some
help comes from the place that hindered them into ill health
in the first place. One condition of their relative wholeness
is how the now enlightened institution still does all it can
to stop the former patient from asking 'Can I see
what you wrote about me?'. They are fobbed off
with polite resolve that won't be broken by comments
like 'Not that much was written', and 'It stopped being
relevant after you left' or 'We threw most of it away,
what there is left would not make sense to you. But the letter
of your admission was saved, it says 'It was all for the best'.
Their former life is made to seem as if it just never happened.
This leaves the ex-cared for relatively whole in the present day,
but now more fully aware that they have a past full of holes
that they know test of other people's ability to accept them.

Any authority can write away somebody's life,
religious or secular, authorities are all alike
in their arrogance, opacity, and selective amnesia.