This is a brief overview of the history of Rand and PeopleCount, and a table of contents.

The beginning of history

I grew up in Seattle, very bright but very shy. Unknown to me, I had suffered a traumatic rejection one day when I was 4, soon after the birth of my younger brother. My young mind decided I was unwanted. My brain quickly repressed the hurt into a secret embarrassment that outwardly looked like shyness. I focused on school. Good grades came easily.

Eventually, I stumbled into Stanford. In 1980 I finished almost all of my BS in applied math. In 1982 I finished my math degree and most of my master’s degree in Computer Science and joined the working world in Silicon Valley. A couple of years later, I found a fascinating 4-day course that opened up the world of inner assumptions. When I saw how I had lived a life built on a 4-year-old’s mistake, the world opened up.

After shyness, adult life began

I worked at a number of interesting jobs. Computer science is a heady world, full of difficult thought problems. A lot of it I loved. In 1988, I handed in the final project to complete the master’s degree, and met a cute young woman and fell in love. In 1990 we married and bought a condo. Two years later we had our first son. Three years later we bought a house with a second son on the way.

Family life

Raising them was an adventure, but took a toll on my marriage. It soured. After about 15 years, I remembered that course from 1985. The company had flourished. I took another. Life brightened. I continued to take courses. Some were intensive weekends. One was 4 weekends in a month. Most were ten 3-hour evening sessions over the course of 13-18 weeks. Life grew rosy, except for work, which soured. I wanted more from life.

A new look at life

About 4 years later, in 2011 I took a big course with the intention of finding a new career. It was four 3-day weekends over the course of a year, looking at human life in a whole new way. It included meeting with other students every week and creating an autobiography to see how I had put myself together. And out of that, a question emerged. I investigated. Out of that, PeopleCount emerged.

1- My youth, up until about age 30. I was lonely and miserable, but bright. After college, I began to escape the limits of my personality in Landmark courses, and achieved enlightenment through Siddha Yoga.

2- My adulthood, until about age 54. Marriage, job, two sons, returning to Landmark.

3- Tackling politics, in 2011 at age 54 (where the story of PeopleCount begins)

4- Looking for a solution, in 2011

5- Finding a solution, in 2011

6- The rest I’ll write after it’s built, as time permits

Note: In late 2012, when PeopleCount was incorporated and the website was built, I engaged with a marketing firm to help. With them, I began blogging a few times per week. In 2015, when I tried again, a marketing coach convinced me to keep blogging, and generate 400 posts! So I’ve been writing a lot, often struggling to come up with things to write about! While PeopleCount isn’t that complex, politics is, and there are many, many ways to think about politics, ourselves, and possibilities.

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This is the first of a set of posts about my life and how PeopleCount came to be.

There are many different ways to thinking of oneself. In this one, I’ll tell about the background of the first 30 years that led me to take the course which later prompted the creation of PeopleCount. In the next one, I’ll cover the next 20 years, up to the time I took that course. The third will be about what happened next, the situation in which I created PeopleCount.org.

The beginning

When I was a kid, I felt unwanted. My best guess is that it started when I was four. I was the younger of two boys and the unthinkable happened. My mother gave birth to a younger brother! I don’t remember, but I’ll bet one day she was busy with him and I decided I wasn’t wanted.

My earliest memories are of preschool. There, and in elementary school, I lived atop a secret embarrassment. I didn’t know what it was or why. I watched other kids, but it was too painful. I wanted to play with them, but couldn’t. So I paid attention to what was being taught. It was easy and I did well. It was so easy, I always finished the homework during class, and had plenty of time to think. So I grew up thinking and got good grades.

High school and college

I began to have friends in 9th grade and finally became a bit social in 11th. I finally had a real friend, real conversations, in 12th when a precocious girl took a liking to me. Still, socializing was difficult. My brain would go blank around anyone I wasn’t close with.

I went to the University of Washington for two years, but felt like I didn’t fit in. A friend from high school spoke well of Stanford. So I transferred.

Stanford was better. I met more interesting and open people.In conversations I became aware of my difficulty in socializing as a problem that should be fixed. But I didn’t know how. I had difficulty finding a major. During a year off, a friend told me about a major in applied math that I could finish. During that, I stumbled into a masters program in the new field of computer science. I applied and was accepted.

In the working world, overcoming shyness in a course

Two years after college, in 1984, a guy at work told me about an amazing course which could help people improve their lives. It was called The Forum.

I took it mainly to get over my shyness. It was fascinating. We looked at how we put together our worldview as children, and how that view warps how life appears. I saw that I was afraid of rejection, so I was afraid of interacting with people. When the fear hit, I froze and had nothing to say- a typical fight/flight/freeze reaction. Seeing that it was all due to my view, and not a strange substance called “shyness”, and that there was no real danger, my mind was no longer so paralyzed. I saw new ways of talking with people and began practicing not being shy.

It wasn’t till the next course that it fully hit me that all through my childhood I felt I wasn’t wanted! I sifted through my experience and my thoughts about myself and saw how completely the “not wanted” view had warped my life. I began to see it as a fiction that I could overcome, rather than just “how I was” that could not be altered.

The notion of being unwanted kept me apart from other kids while I was growing up, so I was lonely. I saw how that was still effecting me. For instance, when I was interacting with a girlfriend, things were fine. But after a few minutes of being apart, I was lonely! Before the courses, I thought that meant she wasn’t enough for me, she wasn’t the right one. After, I realized it was just a feeling that came over me out of habit, and didn’t mean anything about the woman.

One of things I learned in the Forum was the difference between “what happened” and “what it meant to me.” For instance, the feelings of loneliness had meant “she’s not the one”, or “I’m not wanted.” They also had meant, “I’m miserable.” Knowing the difference, I could see the feelings really just meant that I was having feelings. With this insight, I saw I had dated some women who would have been good to marry, but the mindset had made marriage impossible.

Siddha Yoga

Around the same time, a friend introduced me to Siddha Yoga. In Hatha Yoga they do stretching. In Siddha Yoga there was chanting, meditation and talks. The talks were okay, but the chanting seemed to do little for me and I wasn’t meditating much. Then I signed up for their correspondence course, It consisted of ninety six 10-page lessons about attachment, ego and self. My part was to read 2 lessons over and over each week for 4 years.

I read a few pages a day and was often sent into a meditative reverie. It was weird, and the material was fascinating. Over the 4 years of the course, I achieved enlightenment, the realization that identity is artificial and malleable. It was an even stronger lesson that “the way life is” is an illusion. And firm grounding in not taking “myself” seriously.

In the next article, I’ll cover the next 20 years, still background to creating PeopleCount.

This is the second of a set of posts about my life and how PeopleCount came to be. In the previous article about my background, I told about how my personality formed and how I got into Landmark courses, covering about 30 years. In this one I tell about the next 24 years, from about 1987-2011, including my return to Landmark.

Marriage and kids

In 1988 I began dating a wonderful woman. I declared her to be “the right one” and we were married in 1990. After she tried The Forum, I stopped taking Landmark courses.

We bought a condo, married and had a child, a son. My wife quit her job to raise him. We traded the condo for a house and a mortgage just before we had a second son. I worked steadily as a software engineer. My wife took care of the house, the kids and then a dog.

But there were problems. While I could retreat to the ecstasy of enlightenment, I was doing that less and less frequently, and married life was difficult at times. Over the decade starting when my older son turned two, I built up some strong resentments about my wife and our marriage. They began to weigh me down. I had upsets 2-4 times a week that were taking 2-24 hours to get over.

Plus, the Bush debacle weighed on me. He seemed completely incompetent. Both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars seemed at the outset like mistakes. And then he bungled them into huge, expensive failures, decimating millions of lives unnecessarily. In 2006, work became increasingly stressful.

Returning to courses

In 2007, I turned 50 and started a new job. I met a new colleague who seemed like he could really benefit from The Landmark Forum. I invited him and he declined. But it gave me the idea of taking a seminar. A Landmark seminar is an inexpensive, ten 3-hour evening sessions over the course of 13 or more weeks. (They give you one for free when you take The Forum.)

In many of them, we look at an aspect of life and see “how it is” for us. What are the meanings, what are the limits, what are the problems, what seems real? All of these are attachments to thoughts and emotions, components of a limited human world view. We got to see them as artificial, things we put together, invented and then got stuck with. Seeing we invented them gives us the freedom to invent something else, new ways of relating to life that are free from the old limits. New possibilities arise. Seminars aren’t just in the evening. There’s homework- questions to ponder as we study our own lives in relation to the new ways of looking we practice in the seminars.

In the first seminar, I let go of my resentments and life got much better. In the second, I saw the meanings my brain created around the upsets that made them so miserable. They stopped upsetting me and life got even better. In the third seminar, I saw how I reigned in my emotions and was rarely passionate. I played at being passionate and loved it. I kept taking seminars.

I also reviewed the Landmark Forum, and I took the new Advanced Course and the Self Expression and Leadership course. Life was fascinating and wonderful. There were two sets of courses I hadn’t taken. One was the Wisdom Course, which was much more expensive, over $3,000 for 6 weekends over the course of ten months.

Burning out at work

At the same time, work became more and more stressful. I was working mostly alone on difficult projects. I had turned 50 in 2007, so maybe I was slowing down a bit, too. The possibilities in seminars were wonderful. I grew tired of the sterile world of computer software.

In 2011 I felt burned out. I wanted a job that was less stressful and more social. I signed up for The Wisdom Course with the intention of finding a new career.

In the next post, I’ll tell about how PeopleCount arose out of the Wisdom Course.

What happened that I tackled politics?  This is the third of a set of posts about my life and how PeopleCount came to be. In two other posts, I narrated about my background that led me to take courses from Landmark Worldwide, and then about the next 24 years of marriage, child-raising and a return to Landmark. In this one, I’ll tell you more about 2011 and what led me to tackling politics.

2011 – A new look at life in the Landmark Wisdom Course

In the Wisdom Course, one takes a brand new look at life. It’s not a superior view, but it’s not a normal view. What’s a person? A being with a personality, attributes, a body, strengths and weaknesses, a family, a name, a home and a culture, a job. What else?A sense of humor? Interests and concerns? Thinking we are one of these kinds of beings shapes our view of what’s possible.

What would life look like if we view a person as a network of conversations? This is the premise of The Wisdom Course. It covers a lot of wonderful things and many new views of life. One creates a kind of biography and diagrams and collages various aspects of life. There are books to read and homework to do between the 6 weekends over the course of ten months.

Politics mattered, I had not chosen to be resigned

I don’t remember how it happened, but toward the end of the first weekend I realized that I deeply, deeply loved people. Beneath my childhood background of loneliness and rejection, I felt connected and cared deeply about humanity.

Shortly afterward, while doing some homework, I realized I was resigned about politics. I thought back over the years of Bush’s failed presidency. I had agonized over his stupid decisions. It had been obvious that we shouldn’t go to war with Iraq. And I remember the day when we heard he had dismissed the Iraqi army. My wife was in disbelief, chaos was sure to ensue. And it did. Thousands of people were killed, hundreds of thousands injured, millions of lives were destroyed as they were ejected from their communities. And the US assumed two trillion more dollars of debt because Bush was an idiot, his neo-cons were arrogant jerks, and the American people had no effective way of objecting. In the wake of that, I had become resigned.

I tackled politics

Politics mattered hugely. I saw that my resignation kept me from participating. Resignation was an adaptation that made me powerless. It helped keep the status quo in place. I gave it up.

I tried to get involved with politics. I read more. I considered getting involved with some groups, but their meeting agendas looked dull. I wanted to express my opinions and have them matter in our decision making. I wanted to make a difference, not work on a cause for many, many months slowly. I searched for a way to make a difference on-line, but found nothing except that I could write my representative and senators.

Frustration communicating with politicians

I wrote them a few times. Each time I’d get a return message a week later about the same subject, but they didn’t return my message so I didn’t know if they had actually answered it. And because I had typed my message into their website, I had no copy of it. It was frustrating.

And in one of the messages my senator told me that the people didn’t want what I wanted. How did she know? I searched online and the polls about it seemed pretty close. But there were no polls just for my state. How did she know?

Was participating in politics worthwhile?

After a couple of months, I took a break. Was it even worth it to be involved in politics? Even if we could have a government we loved, would it be worth it?

I’ll continue this in the next post where I began to look for a solution.

What happened that I began to look for a solution? This is the fourth of a set of posts about my life and how PeopleCount came to be. The previous post was about 2011 and what happened that I tackled politics and found it to be frustrating.

Politics was frustrating

Trying to be involved in politics was frustrating. I had to write not just a letter to say what I wanted on an issue, but I had to write three letters! And I had to keep track of them so I could analyze the response from my member of Congress. And if I didn’t like the response? What could I do? Nothing.

When the next election came around, I might have a choice in the primary. Would I have to write each challenger a letter on each topic, too? But the funding was such that almost certainly the incumbent would win. My representative usually doesn’t even have a challenger. My senators don’t have serious challengers. Mostly no one is involved in politics so too little dissatisfaction is expressed for a challenger to have a chance.

We needed a better system. But was it worthwhile to build one or fix ours? I sat with the question.

Would fixing America’s political system be worthwhile?

About a week later, I asked a friend. What would it be like if we had a transparent government? What if we had a government we loved? What if we liked what they did and their plans? What if we liked their responsiveness and we knew they represented us well? Would that be so much better than we have now, would that be worth working for?

What if we had real choice in elections? What if campaigns were inexpensive so good people could run, not just people willing to spend all their time fundraising? What if members of Congress could represent all of their constituents and not just their party?

Congress was in gridlock, fighting over every inch of the budget. Oil and coal companies were flooding the news with fake reports that the earth may not be warming, often paying scientists. Over 90% of congressional incumbents win elections even though less than 30% of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing. Half of eligible voters vote. Less than a quarter vote in primaries. Many Americans have withdrawn from politics entirely. Elections have turned into popularity contests so many others don’t bother to be decently informed about issues. Parties posture and strategize to keep control instead of working on compromises. Wealthy interests spend billions to steer trillions of tax dollars. And the people have no say. Politicians are corrupted by the lure of money and the “revolving door” where they retire to make lots of money lobbying. What if we could change this? Would it be worth it?

I decide to look for a solution

I asked people these questions for two months. Would it be worthwhile to solve our political problems? What would that be like? The outcome of all the conversations was a resounding Yes.

So I decided to look for a solution and discovered one, in the next post.

This is the fifth of a set of posts about my life and how PeopleCount came to be. In the previous post, it was about mid-2011 that I concluded that it would be worthwhile to look for a way to transform politics.

So I began to look.

As I looked, it seemed like there was blame for everyone.

Voters were a “silent majority”. Many didn’t care, were poorly informed or were too lazy to vote.

Politicians were corrupt. They spent half their time fundraising. They stuffed pork into bills for their districts. Some took bribes.

The wealthy seemed to hugely influence politics, much more than one person should.

Corporations seemed even more influential, even though they weren’t even people. All the people in a corporation already were represented- why would a business entity have any right to influence politics?

And parties were a mess. They struggled for power instead of compromising. They divided people instead of uniting them. Plus they divided up most issues so that most people favored one party on some issues and the other party for some others, but had to vote for only one. The purpose of parties seemed to be to represent ideologies, not people. And worse, since candidates didn’t really know what people wanted, they mostly played it safe and adopted party positions. Plus they needed to stay loyal to the party to get party support. Parties were good, they served a purpose. But they were also an obstacle when it came to our representatives actually representing people.

What about the media? I had read that there was an issue before Congress a while back of whether the television signal spectrum should be sold at an auction to raise a lot more money. None of the TV stations had aired the issue in their news reports and there was almost no coverage in the print media as well. Even the media was corrupted.

Polls were of little help. It was very difficult to know about what Americans wanted on lots of issues. Polls were very selective and shallow. I had been polled a few times and I wanted to read up on an issue before answering, but that didn’t work for the polling organization. As I looked for information on issues, it took a lot of searching and often there was none. Polls were not very useful.

Stepping back

As a professional problem solver, I knew that blame was a sign that I was thinking inside the context of the problem. All of these views were from within the system. So I took a new look at each group. Everyone was doing what they could, what they were allowed to do. I realized that the system was working as well as it could, with its current design.

How would it look if Congress would instead do what the people wanted? To do that, they’d have to know what the people wanted. To tell Congress, the people would have to want to tell them, which would only happen if Congress were listening. How could Congress listen to 200 million people? And why would Congress listen? I sat with this for a few weeks, and played with it, looking at the relationships.

I thought back to what I wanted, to tell my representatives what I wanted. What if I could? What if I could just vote on issues? The solution started to fall into place. What if people could vote on issues and say which issues were important to them?

Discovered: A basic solution began to form

I remembered something I had heard in courses. Being accountable meant you must give an account for what you did and what you will do. What if Congress were accountable to the people? They’re not currently, even though we vote for them. But that makes sense because voting is just about firing them. Accountability isn’t fire-ability. That’s a bit of it, on the tail end. But in my job, accountability happened every day or week when I’d report to my manager. So what if Congress would report to us on issues?

They won’t like that- sending a report to everyone on an issue. They’ll want to talk to different people differently. But if people were voting, the system would know where someone stood on an issue. So the representative could write several reports for the different audiences and the system could deliver them based on the way the people had voted!

How would this help with elections, with fire-ability? Challengers could use the system as well. They could report to citizens just like incumbents. And they could keep incumbents honest, pointing out any lies. We could really get to know our politicians.

These reports would be rich communication from politicians to citizens on issues important to people. They would let candidates run effective campaigns for little money. Politicians would no longer have to be accountable to the wealthy. And knowing what people wanted and being able to run effective campaigns, politicians would no longer have to be accountable to parties!

Landmark courses have another bit of jargon, a “structure of fulfillment”. We say we want politicians to be accountable to the people, but they can’t. There’s no communication structure that lets them account to the people, no way for it to happen. Basically, the solution is to create a structure of fulfillment for political accountability to the people.

Now that I had a solution, what next?

There was more to it- more analysis and more details, but that was basically how it happened. In retrospect, the things I had desired and missed when I tried getting involved in politics were basic to accountability, so the my experience had led me straight there.

My Landmark courses had provided the context, and the key definition of accountability. And luckily I was a problem solver so I knew the way to solve a problem was to seek to understand it from the outside, rather than to just see it from the point of view of a citizen. In hindsight, it seems reasonable that it was someone who was a problem solver and a Landmark grad that put this together. In a sense, God put someone with the right tools in the right place at the right time. I just did what I did naturally. It didn’t really take strength of character.

But the next part would, actually trying to build a company for it. I would need to evangelize the solution, assemble a team and build it. That was much farther outside my comfort zone.

There’s more to the story. I’ll get to it…

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