Alec Chapa
Philosofarian welcomed his questions when the world rolled it’s eyes.
Alec has always been the person in the room with too many questions. “My teachers were more annoyed than impressed,” he says. He wasn’t trying to be difficult — he just wanted to understand what people meant, why they thought the way they did, and how ideas held together.
In high school, someone gave him a copy of the Tao Te Ching. He read it, reread it, and still had no idea what he was looking at. “I didn’t understand it at all,” he says, “but I wanted to.” So he went online to find someone teaching it. This was years before philosophy lectures were common on YouTube, and almost nothing came up. But there were a handful of short videos Seth had recorded while teaching remotely — ten-minute clips filmed in his home library or wherever he happened to be on the road.
The videos weren’t meant to be public; the students kept getting frustrated with a password system, so the easiest solution was to leave them open. Alec watched them all. Then he started leaving comments. Then he moved to DMs. Alec asked questions for years before he ever came to Oregon.
When Alec left for college, he expected to find people who wanted to learn and think together. “That’s not what happened,” he says. “It was so shallow. I dropped out.” Back in San Antonio, he made a plan: community college, odd jobs, and some way to keep learning on his own.
Gad suggested Seth invite Alec out to Astoria. He could attend the local community college and study with Philosofarian too. “It was a long shot,” Alec says. “But I said yes.”
Alec Chapa describes finding Philosofarian.
He moved across the country and split his time between studying, taking community college classes, and helping shape the early Scoundrels gatherings at Blue Scorcher Bakery. He brought questions that pushed conversations into unexpected places.
“Philosofarian gave me the depth and community I went looking for,” he says. “It showed me what real education can be.”
Where he is now
After his time in Astoria, Alec moved to Portland and finished his degree in Conflict Resolution. He returned to San Antonio and started putting his talent to work. Eventually he launched Mosaic Collaborative Consulting and began taking on the kinds of situations where people need someone steady to help them talk things through. Much of his work involves easing tension, sorting out what’s actually going on, and helping people move toward agreements they can live with.
He identifies shared values and can describe complex ideas in plain terms. He listens. He asks good questions. He pays attention to how people speak to one another. He’s inspiring conversations. And he sees his mediation work as philosophical in a straightforward way: it’s thinking with people about what they’re trying to sort out. His time with Philosofarian helped him refine instincts he’d had for years.
