There is a line used by people who attend twelve-step programmes to highlight the risk of giving up, say, alcohol, but continuing to live the life of a drinker. The individual is intent on recovery but hangs around the same bars and goes to the same night clubs, essentially making everything harder on themselves. “If you don’t want a haircut,” the saying goes, “don’t go to the barber.” Jared Diamond’s book Upheaval made the case that countries could learn from the manner in which individuals repair their lives and it is also an idea explored by Sathnam Sanghera in Empireland…

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