If they didn't give up everything

Hello:

Would you say that

"there never had been a spiritual life for the rich if they didn't give up everything"

can mean

"there never had been a spiritual life for the rich except in occasions when they gave up everything?"

or:

"there never had been a spiritual life for the rich because they didn't give up everything"

To me, it's ambiguous.

-------
[Robey, a rich, confused guy, wants to write a (confused!) book about rich people and their tribulations in time and why they hadn't really been happy.]

This book, he went on, he wanted to call The Needle's Eye. Because there never had been a spiritual life for the rich if they didn't give up everything. But it wasn't any longer merely the rich who were headed for trouble. In the near future technology was going to create abundance and everyone would have enough of everything. There'd be inequality but not starvation or great need. People would eat. Well, when they ate, what then? The Eden of liberty, plenty, and love, the dream of the French Revolution coming to pass.

Augie March, by Bellow, p. 496
-------

Thanks.
Marius Hancu
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: The working poor scam
    ... > taxation more comprehensively contradicted by the facts than that one. ... Inequality of wealth and incomes is the cause of the masses' well-being, ... socialism - and then the bill gates and other rich seekers lift us all ... doctrine no point at which the endeavors toward equalization would have ...
    (sci.econ)
  • Re: This guy is telling it like it is...
    ... inequality and the private financial institutions who are at the top ... Put on tv, they scream generalities, they want their loans ... they want more 'stuff' that the rich enjoy. ...
    (rec.music.artists.kiss)
  • Re: Inequality
    ... you can't is a social inequality. ... least healthy are the poor in rich areas - a number of mechanisms are ... equality and Saloth Sar was probably correct that his programme was the ...
    (uk.philosophy.humanism)
  • Re: Leftist dogma: "The rich benefit from the system more, so they should pay higher tax rates."
    ... believe the rich should pay a disproportionately higher share of the ... "Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to ... Jefferson and Madison even proposed taxing ONLY the rich, ... fortunes," and the parallel between that degeneracy and the degeneracy ...
    (rec.crafts.metalworking)
  • Re: Question re: inequality
    ... > the poorer to become poorer and more numerous? ... I've read that inequality increased in the late 1800s. ... the higher wages earned by advanced eduation (which generally can only be ... rich people give away most of their wealth before they die (charities, ...
    (sci.econ)