For example, European societies were about to enter the industrial economic stage when they made contact with societies in the new world that were not as developed, some who were still living in the stone age.

Just imagine, that this would not have happened. Where ever people traveled, they found more of the same. No differences in development, no otherness in terms of technological and otherwise existing cultures. If modern people think they cannot learn anything for their own sake/development and understanding of the world from this otherness, they are prone to ignorance and self overestimation. The otherness in itself is in my view one stone of wisdom, through the perceived differences in development and habit, the technological oriented mind can see where he lacks something and the mind, bound to tribe and locality, can enter for his part an unknown sphere. For that, the approach has to be slow, not fast, is what I think. In both realms you depend on relaxed empathic minds, would you agree?

I once heard somewhere that pushing a so-called paradigm shift can only be done in a violent way, that destruction is part of the cosmic plan to enable creation. Unlucky will be the one who does not see it this way, when his own physical-spiritual existence breaks under this power.

Personally, I do not attach too much importance to either destruction or creation through such a change, i.e. I do not want to identify with either of them.