When?

Every now and again something called ‘paradigm shift’ ‘happens’

For reasons rooted in the material nature/origin of everything, smaller cultural spaces, aka societies, tend to evolve faster. For as long as they have enough resources/opportunities. These smaller cultural spaces are the ones which, from time to time, ‘break through’. ‘Take a leap’. Usually as a measure of last resort. Out of (evolutionary) necessity rather than as a voluntary choice.
Afterwards, the successful paradigm shifts are copied by the rest. Adapted for their own circumstances.

The last paradigm shift we have been able to identify started some 2.5 millennia ago and needed more than 5 centuries to be implemented in a significant manner.

The last one started in a small community. And, for a while, has been confined to a very small geographical area. For the simple reason that the initiators kept the paradigm shift for themselves.
It spread only after a reformer opened it up for everybody.
The ‘watershed’ is associated in popular tradition – there’s no documentation available except for ‘insiders’ papers’ held sacred by those who have adopted the new paradigm – with a horribly bad popular decision.

The currently unfolding one started a century and a half ago. As an idea. The first attempt to put it in practice failed miserably. Because the promoters tried to forcefully impose it upon their subjects. It is being fueled by a succession of really bad popular choices.

Back then, ‘they’ weren’t ready either. For the change.
But the ‘new’ world was better.
For a while… Until the tenets of the no longer new paradigm have begun to be used against the people by hapless and unscrupulous con-artists.