Why civilization? For about 4 hundreds of thousands of years: We lived in nice places with good, appropriate climate. Plains, forests, islands, and mountains were our homes, not concrete beehives and cement pavements. We worked for 12 hours a week. That’s instead of 40 we have now and 70+ we had a century ago. And the job we used to do was that every man likes doing - meaningful, engaging, cooperative, and requiring to exercise all the natural talents. We fished, we gathered, we hunted. Today we spend our holidays and weekends that way, we try to replace hunting with football or pay for it, but we used to do it for living. And we had more time on arts and communication with our children, wives or husbands, our tribesmen. Today we bow down before our desks and keep our backs bent for most of our lives and shuffle symbols on paper in stuffy solitude. There were no wars, no burglary, no fraud, because there was no property to hold, hence nothing to kill for or die for. There were no governments because there was nothing to lay taxes upon. There were no borders, no visas, no red tape, and other chains that we need so much today. There were no and couldn’t be epidemics that could obliterate half of the mankind, because the groups of people were sparse and separate in distance. We had all that and then. Snap! About 8000 years ago we decided to change everything by settling down and taking up agriculture. Instantly we lost our 12 hour workweek, we started to live years shorter, we got many more diseases, we had to begin organizing cruel governments to rule us, we had to learn and do warfare, we had to learn how to deceive for power and murder for metal. We started to get our first worldwide plagues and pests. We started to enslave people to work in the field, because working in the field is so damn difficult so let another person do it, but me. For the purpose of slavery we ingeniously created racism and nationalism and many other isms, because it makes it so easy to maintain power and sway people. Bureaucracy began to grow to feed growing bureaucracy. And this wheel of surprising and fantastic consequences has never stopped spinning. So why did we do that bold first move? Was it worth it (and eventually and in the process)?

on something = about something? S. King has a book called "On writing". Do I correctly understand it as just "About writing"? And if so what title to an article would be preferable "On Americans" or "About Americans"? "On learning English" or "About learning English"? Or are they interchangeable? Thanks.

Could you recommend a good non-fiction book?

Something that changed or broadened your understanding of the world greatly, or is just a fun and interesting read.

Many thanks in advance.

Could you help me with the oblique mood? In one quite old textbook I read: " Exercise I. Rewrite these sentences, using Pattern 1 and the examples below: Example: a) If it is cold, we'll put on our warm coats. If it were cold, we should put on our warm coats. b) If my friends come to see me, I'll be very glad. If my friends came to see me, I should be very glad. ... " So, does the exercise ask me to rewrite "conditional 1" (If I go to London, I'll be happy) as "conditional 2" (If I went to London, I should be happy), supposing that the meaning isn't changed? Or the meaning changes? Are "I should be happy" and "I would be happy" interchangeable and have the same meaning? Or perhaps "I should be happy" isn't "conditional 2" (hypothetical), but more "conditional 1" (factual)?