WHEN ENOUGH ISN'T ENOUGH

Lady Ga Ga promenades through the Yankees club house with black bra and matching panties bursting out from a half-opened baseball jersey...jihadists recruit pregnant women for their suicide missions...science offers female Viagra pills...the Venter Institute vows to perfect its recent synthetic life experiments ...and the Chicago Cubs raise their ticket prices to see one of the worst teams in baseball.

This can only mean one thing. George Santayana was right: "Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim."

When everyone from performers to pharmaceuticals feel the need to excel by exceeding, it makes you wonder. Is there anything left in our world that's enough just the way it is? Has no one reached a place where they can feel satisfied, at least for a small while? Or is the frenzy to zoom higher -- here in America labeled "aspiration" -- so relentless that we must remain forever restless?

To aspire is good; to obsess, much less so. And yet here we are, a culture of obsessions. And obsessors. Pushing the envelope, thinking outside the box, going for the gold. Enough is never enough. Which of course dooms us to an eternal fascination of frustrations.

Aesop told the wonderful tale of the dog who had a great slab of red meat in his mouth, and was about to make a mighty meal of it. But then he saw himself in the reflection of a pool. Couldn't stand finding another dog with something he didn't have. He jumped into the water; lost his meal; ended up wet, hungry and maybe a little wiser.

Enough just wasn't enough....!

Today, Aesop's little wisdom would be counter-culture and surely counter-intutive to any CEO, Wall Street hustler, oil driller, sales manager, think tank director, or general. More is the name of today's game, especially when you're in first place and can't bear the thought of second.

I couldn't help think about all this the last time I visited Rome and London. People there -- especially on a lazy summer day -- seemed a whole lot more content without their old hard-driving, first-place empires...