A photograph of a tiger with her young adolescent cubs doing the I-love-you-Ma-when-do-we-eat-full-body-leg-rub thing; evocative and all but the tag line, which included the words unbreakable bond, got me thinking.

First though, that unbreakable bond thing? Yeah, well, not so much. Maternal bonds, especially in the more predatory specie, tend to weaken, if not actually dissolve, as the cub matures; gender, mating rights, threat perception, hunting range and rights, sorts of issues help in that dissolution process. We humans, (and I use the term loosely given the amount of sapience we display in the stewardship of our lives), have sublimated those ‘animal’ tendencies according to our cultural norms. There is not, however, a parent(sane) alive who has not emitted a soul sigh of relief at the adulthood of an offspring and the ensuing easing of parental R word, responsibility; bond weakened, boom.

None of which is to detract from the photograph; nor the resonances with the I-miss-my-slightly-less-predatory-mom places in my soul. As a work of art, it did its job and touched me. The tag line, however, was a touch painting the lily and gilding gold-ish. Not, as the Seinfeld Krew might be tempted to say, that there is anything wrong with that. I also understand, I think, the need of the writer of that tag line to hug his/her mom and ask her if dinner was ready, expressed in the only means available. Hell, I might have done the same on a different day.

With an assurance of apologies for inadvertent offense and disrespect and having, one hopes, soothed the sensibilities of the author of the tag line - over statement, emotional need, wtf am I complaining about?

See, the overstatement of an emotional need, is, as even a cursory glance at the history of governance will show, a method of communication between, no, actually, from, the ruler to the ruled. It is, after all, an efficient way to recruit the great unwashed and unsophisticated into the  cannon fodder needed to man the front lines while the heavy thinking is happening in  ivory towers. Bonds cemented by emotion are not susceptible to reason. One of the reasons why Religion got into the business of governance and that, as we can all see, has worked out so well. Reason is a necessary component in the governance of a putative democracy.And when we, as more washed, although not necessarily more sophisticated, society accept that overstatement as the lingua franca, well, Trump, RSS, Daesh, Nazis, militant Buddhists(!) et.al, happen. Accepting florid displays of emotional need into the patterns of political, which is to say public, speech is handing the reins of democracy over to those who eschew the sense in the words unbreakable bonds in favour of the emotion triggered and generally leads to snarling, and lunging, and blood, and pain; a real possibility in the life cycle of the pictured trio.

NLP is a thing folks, like it or not.