How much is enough?

It’s a good question, especially these days when the rest of the world ramps up for their shot at “I want it all; I want it now!” What happens to the earth and the atmosphere when millions of newly wealthy in China and India “need” three cars per household and all the excess and waste that goes with our too successfully exported popular culture? More to the point, having exploited, hoarded, and taken for granted the globe’s natural resources for the past two centuries, what moral ground does the West have for urging the world’s newly wealthy nations to deny themselves what we’ve consumed as our economic right?

The question comes late for us, but it is nevertheless important: how much is enough?

When a single hedge fund manager’s personal profit from the sub-prime loan housing mortgage debacle exceeds 3 billion dollars, I ask, how much is enough? When big oil companies post profits in excess of 30 billion dollars for the first quarter of 2008, amid crisis at the gas pump for all families, I ask, how much is enough? How many square feet of house is enough for empty-nesters, especially when the average total living space for a Chinese family of three today is smaller in square footage than our average garage—where we store, not our cars, but our out of control accumulation of stuff?

Love of animals drives the question home for me. The 2007 uproar in thoroughbred horse racing circles, for example, makes me ask how fast is enough? When does the push for faster track speeds, younger superstar equines, and the inbreeding driving the thoroughbred industry, become too much? When do the ends that justify our means become abusive and cruel to the animals we create for our pleasure? And why do we wait for a horror show of collapse and death at the Kentucky Derby to ask the question?

The ‘enough’ question is extremely salient to our breed, the Scottish Terrier. 108 years of linebreeding has locked into our gene pool genetic predisposition for bladder cancer, among other genetic problems, making our breed some 20 times more likely to die of bladder cancer than other dogs. As a result, Scotties have the unwelcome ‘honor’ to be canine subjects for current NIH Cancer Research into the genetics of bladder cancer because the inbreeding over the past century that shrank our gene pool to a gene puddle inadvertently created a small, inbred, genetically imperiled, population ideal for genome mapping. Historically we’ve justified linebreeding as the best means to an end, that is, as the way to “fix” the breed type as purebred Scottie. But the truth is the Scottish Terrier “type” was fixed in our breed long ago, so that today, even dogs of unknowable pedigree are correctly singled-out among other dogs and identified by Rescue volunteers for rescue and adoption. We know “Scottie” from non-Scottie even across a range of scottieness. So it is not “type” our linebreeding is establishing today after a century of breeding; it is contemporary definitions of “handsome” embodying this generation’s interpretation of the breed standard.

My question is, how much handsome is enough? How far do we go breeding-champions-from-champions in the human sport of dogs? When do the ends that justify our means become abusive and cruel to the Scotties we create for our pleasure? And why do we wait for a horror show of inbreeding collapse and death to ask the question?

How much is enough? It’s not an easy question to answer with reference to Scotties, or with reference to ourselves. It’s hard not to reduce persons, dogs, horses, jobs, and life itself into some sort of bottom-line. The truth is, our consumerism overwhelms us with the superficial, while robbing us of what is substantive: creative time for ourselves … nurturing relationships … dreams that feed our soul. It’s too easy in a materialistic culture, where only profit counts, to translate the ‘enough-question’ merely in terms of quantities: how rich? how fast? how many Best-of-Breed wins? Said another way, my dogs lead me toward a different appraisal and understanding: the real ‘enough-question’ is less about ‘how much’ and more about what truly counts.

My Scotties offer clues to what is simple, basic, and real in my life—and these are matters that define me, the matters that count. Their small size, for example, reminds me that when I answer the ‘enough’ question, bigger is not better because life’s dearest treasures are in little things. Therefore, bigger-faster-more thinking leads me astray. Furthermore, to know deeply the Scottish Terrier is to know that their lion-heart is disproportionately over-sized even beyond their big head. That great-heartedness outlines relational bonds of profound depth and the gift of that Scottie companionship shows me their highest good. Companions–whether dogs or humans– can never be ‘means’ to other ends; they must always be treasured ‘ends’ in themselves. Again, my dogs’ short legs speak to me of the wisdom of staying close to the earth in grappling with the ‘enough-question’, close to the cycles of Nature. This commonsense wisdom of keeping my own feet on the ground—the real ground of down-to-earth practicalities of inter-connectedness of all living things—offers concreteness rather than abstractions for assessing how much is enough in my life.

How much, then, is enough? How fast is enough in thoroughbred horses? How handsome is enough in Scotties? How much is enough in measuring the good life?

I don’t have glib answers. I do have clues from little black dogs in our lives, clues which enable me to re-direct the question in ways important to me. I’m learning it is little things, virtues, and values, which must inform my answer to the ‘enough question.’ I’m learning that when I turn life into a quest for qualities rather than quantities, a quest to treat companions as ends in themselves, not as means to other ends, I enter a realm with my dogs where ‘goods’ are never scarce and ‘enough’ does not apply.

Joseph Harvill, publisher Great Scots Magazine