A lot of times, I get asked about the dynamics of secular cycles from people who are used to religious cycles. Here's the very basic set of books I'd suggest:
Adaptive Group Dynamics
You first have to understand the basics of what makes an adaptive group. This gives you the tools to understand Wokeism's rise. Since the collapse of religion as a social cohered over the last couple of decades, moralized politics has quickly taken the functional role casual religion used to play.
Darwin's Cathedral by D.S. Wilson
Secular Cycles
The best set of texts on this topic has been done by Peter Turchin. If you're wanting to get to the meat of things, look to his analysis of American History and his predictions of a mid 2020's secular collapse. You can get some basic information from his blog - but it will be incomplete, and fairly piecemeal. I personally prefer the more complete "Ultra Society" to Ages of Discord", because the former goes over about 6 test case societies instead of concentrating on the modern U.S. Both go. over the same basic theory though... (i.e. the intro chapters are mostly cut and pasted from one to the other).
Ultra Society by Peter Turchin
Historical Parallels
American Revolution (late 1700's)
There are three good time periods to study to get a feel for what is going on today. But since there are so many history books about these major eras, don't expect to just pick up anything and figure out the dynamics. To see what is going on at the proper level of scale - you have to be picky. I'll order these based upon how good the information is rather than which era had the most informative parallels for today's time.
American Revolutions by Alan Taylor
This will get you up to speed about Antifa dynamics, cancel culture dynamics and societal bifurcation. While it isn't presented in terms of multi-level selection theory (i.e. the theory that forms Darwin's Cathedral), it enables an astute reader to pick up everything they need here. Most other histories actually hinder this lens.
If you really want to get some more insight into the Revolutionary era you can also read this one on the French Revolution. But, it won't give you insight into the tensions on BOTH sides. You just get a sense of how breaking the norms around critiquing your government, and "re-imagining power" can let the cat out of the bag.
War of Religions (1600's)
Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe by Daniel Nexon
This one will get you up to speed on the Protestant - Catholic war of religions during the 1600's. This is when the printing press came out and revolutionized the tools available for group formation. It resulted in a bloody mess. It is very good at revealing the process of grievance sacralization. Obviously social media is the parallel to the 1600's printing press and cancel culture and intolerant Wokeism is the parallel to Protestantism. The main superficial switch is that Wokeism-as-Protestantism has the establishment place, while historically Catholicism occupied this side of things. This is not a big deal if you're comfortable with multi-scale thinking (i.e. systems thinking). History rhymes - never repeats.
Roman Christianity (300's)
Centre Place podcasts on Paganism, Manichaeism, and the fall of Rome,
There are no good books here. Nor are there any good podcasts. The historical record is just too thin to do anything more than speculate. Nonetheless understanding the basics of how Constantine took over Roman systems from the outside via the adoption of Christianity to satisfy societal equality appetites is a very close parallel to how Wokeism is energizing modern desires for equality. It also matches the tools the modern left is using to delegitimize their opponents "in the sake of peace, equality and progress".
Inquisitions (ie. Spanish Inquisition - late 1400's)
I haven't gone deep into this period. Mass hysterias whose energies are re-directed/enhanced to purge societies obviously has strong parallels to modern Wokeism (and early 1900's facism). If you don't know how mass hysterias go, you'll need to find some resources here. The Salem Witch Trials are an easy entry point. I'll just link to a Centre Place podcast as I already have it saved in a youtube list.
Spanish Inquisition - Centre Place
Group Dynamics
If you want to start going past the basics, then you'll need to have a good grounding on group dynamics. While you can use the cultural evolution literature here (Mesoudi, Henrich, Lewens, etc.), the scale they tackle things is just a bit off. You need something that bridges the gap between individual psychology and sociology. Group agent theory does this perfectly. It explains the dynamics of WHY we form adaptive groups and HOW proximate genetic control manifests itself in practice.
Group Agency by List and Pettit
