Ep. 36 | Philosopher, author, and social entrepreneur Tomas Björkman’s claims are convincing: our culture needs to go through a new developmental paradigm shift. Either it will grow more complex—or crumble, as empires have crumbled in the past. The collective worldview needs to change, and to that end Tomas’ focus is on the relationship between growing our personal psychological maturity and societal change, a relationship Nordic countries recognized to their great advantage towards the end of the nineteenth century. Extrapolating from his vast experience with business leadership, where inner psychological maturity turns out to be a foremost aspect of success, Tomas extends this knowledge, applying it to all of society, and emphasizes the importance of supporting a lifelong inner process of development for every individual. The only hope for our shared future seems to lie in wiser decision making by individuals who have expanded both mind and heart to encompass the greater complexities of our time. Recorded on December 2019, with Dr. Roger Walsh, John Dupuy, and Douglas Prater.“Conscious effort on large-scale consciousness development actually worked.”(For Apple Podcast users, click here to view the complete show notes on the episode page.)Note: This podcast was recorded live and includes, at times, some extraneous noises in the background. Please excuse them -- we felt the conversation was very valuable and well worth sharing with our audience. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.Topics & Time StampsIntroducing Tomas Björkman: philosopher, author, entrepreneur (02:28)Tomas’ unique contribution: cultivating psychological maturity individually and collectively, in order to co-create a new culture and survive as a species (03:39)Inner psychological maturation is one of the most important aspects of a good businessman, a good leader; this knowledge needs to be applied to all of us and society as a whole (05:12)The importance of getting the corporate culture right, societal culture right, and support inner psychological development (06:37)Our worldview in the West hasn’t changed since the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason: it’s time for another deep shift to encompass greater complexity (09:49)Looking at culture (and consciousness) as a complex, self-organizing, evolving system: we have reached the bifurcation point (14:47)The Nordic secret: Scandinavian countries realized the connection between the maturity of our inner world and our society at the end of the 1800s, becoming the happiest, richest, most stable countries in the world (24:24)The establishment of retreat centers for young people to find their inner compass and creating a critical mass of self-authoring people (28:20)Maturing from the socialized mind to the self-authoring mind, from conventional to postconventional (30:15)Consciously navigating psychological transformation and the self-transforming mind (34:24)The corporate realization that to succeed in business, you need your employees to mature to the level of self-authoring mind: Deliberately Developmental Organizations (37:54)The German idealistic philosophers’ reaction against Enlightenment philosophy and the evolution of mind and heart: Bildung (39:30)What constitutes depth of relationship? Inner development, deepening of...