Unique Latin Quotes

(The word “genius” comes from the Latin, and originally referred to a guardian spirit that watched over the birth of each person; it later came to refer to the innate qualities that make each person uniquely gifted.)

The continuous work of our life,” says Montaigne, “is to build death.” He quotes the Latin poets: Prima, quae vitam dedit, hora corpsit. And again: Nascentes morimur. Man knows and thinks this tragic ambivalence which the animal and the plant merely undergo. A new paradox is thereby introduced into his destiny. “Rational animal,” “thinking reed,” he escapes from his natural condition without, however, freeing himself from it. He is still a part of this world of which he is a consciousness. He asserts himself as a pure internality against which no external power can take hold, and he also experiences himself as a thing crushed by the dark weight of other things. At every moment he can grasp the non-temporal truth of his existence. But between the past which no longer is and the future which is not yet, this moment when he exists is nothing. This privilege, which he alone possesses, of being a sovereign and unique subject amidst a universe of objects, is what he shares with all his fellow-men. In turn an object for others, he is nothing more than an individual in the collectivity on which he depends.

The English word personality is derived from the Latin word for “mask.” Simply put, our personality is the mask we wear. Taking off that mask, trying to get behind the mask, is the work of the spiritual journey. A mark of spiritual growth is when we stop polishing the mask and instead start working on our character. The Enneagram helps us do that character-structure work.

When I got to Crude Sciences at the end of the day, Dante was waiting for me at our table. This time, with no Latin book, no journal. “Hello,” he said, pulling my chair out for me. Surprised, I sat down next to him, trying not to stare at his perfectly formed arms. “Hi,” I said, with an attempt at nonchalance. “How are you?” I could feel his eyes on me. “Fine,” I said carefully, as Professor Starking handed out our lab assignments. Dante frowned. “Not very talkative today, I see.” I thrust a thermometer into the muddy water of the fish tank in front of us, which was supposed to represent an enclosed ecosystem. “So now you want to talk? Now that you’ve finished your Latin homework?” After a prolonged period of silence, he spoke. “It was research.” “Research on what?” “It doesn’t matter anymore.” I threw him a suspicious look. “Why’s that?” “Because I realized I wasn’t paying attention to the right thing.” “Which is?” I asked, looking back at the board as I smoothed out the hem of my skirt. “You.” My lips trembled as the word left his mouth. “I’m not a specimen.” “I just want to know you.” I turned to him, wanting to ask him a million questions. I settled for one. “But I can’t know anything about you?” Dante leaned back in his chair. “My favorite author is Dante, obviously,” he said, his tone mocking me. “Though I’m partial to the Russians. I’m very fond of music. All kinds, really, though I especially enjoy Mussorgsky and Stravinsky or anything involving a violin. They’re a bit dark, no? I used to like opera, but I’ve mostly grown out of it. I have a low tolerance for hot climates. I’ve never enjoyed dessert, though I once loved cherries. My favorite color is red. I often take long walks in the woods to clear my head. As a result, I have a unique knowledge of the flora and fauna of North American. And,” he said, his eyes burning through me as I pretended to focus on our lab, “I remember everything everyone has ever told me. I consider it a special talent.” Overwhelmed by the sudden influx of information, I sat there gaping, unsure of how to respond. Dante frowned. “Did I leave something out?

Newcomers to manuscripts sometimes ask what such books tell us about the societies that created them. At one level, these Gospel Books describe nothing, for they are not local chronicles but standard Latin translations of religious texts from far away. At the same time, this is itself extraordinarily revealing about Ireland. No one knows how literacy and Christianity had first reached the islands of Ireland, possibly through North Africa. This was clearly no primitive backwater but a civilization which could now read Latin, although never occupied by the Romans, and which was somehow familiar with the texts and artistic designs which have unambiguous parallels in the Coptic and Greek churches, such as carpet pages and Canon tables. Although the Book of Kells itself is as uniquely Irish as anything imaginable, it is a Mediterranean text and the pigments used in making it include orpiment, a yellow made from arsenic sulphide, exported from Italy, where it is found in volcanoes. There are clearly lines of trade and communication unknown to us.

Greeks and Romans were anti-Mediterranean cultures, in the sense of being at odds with much of the political heritages of Persia, Egypt, and Phoenicia. While Hellenism was influenced—and enriched—at times by Near Eastern, Egyptian, and Persian art, literature, religion, and architecture, its faith in consensual government and free markets was unique. Greek and Latin words for “democracy,” “republic,” “city-state,” “constitution,” “freedom,” “liberty,” and “free speech” have no philological equivalents in other ancient languages of the Mediterranean (and few in the contemporary languages of the non-West as well).

At its core, each vocation is a particular, unique instantiation of the father’s summons to the true homeland of the kingdom. The etymological root of the word ‘vocation’ points in this direction. The word is derived from the Latin verb “vocare” – “to call.” Thus, through the son the father calls each one of us home.

And, in fact, a crucial additional, and almost-always-overlooked, aspect of intelligence in living systems is that they possess the capacity to innovate behavior, that is, to generate unique solutions to the environmental challenges that face them. They have the ability, as the Latin root of the word indicates, to choose.

But the decubitus ulcer presents a unique psychological horror. The word “decubitus” comes from the Latin decumbere, to lie down. As a rule, bedridden patients have to be moved every few hours, flipped like pancakes to ensure that the weight of their own bodies doesn’t press their bones into the tissue and skin, cutting off blood circulation. Without blood flow, tissue begins decay. The ulcers occur when a patient is left lying in bed for an extended period, as often happens in understaffed nursing homes. Without some movement, the patient will literally begin to decompose while he or she is still living, eaten alive by their own necrotic tissue.

Homo sum humani a me nihil alienum puto?" suggested Arsenic. "Exactly!" beamed Percy. He did so admire a sagacious woman. Admittedly, Arsenic was the first to match him Latin-to-Latin, but he'd always suspected such females must exist. He was seized by the horrifying suspicion that she may be the only one. She must be protected, he decided. A unique specimen among humans. Should I write a paper? Rue looked at Quesnel and then Primrose. "Are they flirting?" "It's like watching dirigibles crash midair, filled with hot air, slow and horrible yet inevitable," said Quesnel. "I don't think it can be flirting when it's done so badly, can it?" Primrose finished her coffee, eyes wide with wonder. Percy glared at them all. It was all very well for them to pick on him, but they shouldn't pick on Arsenic. She hadn't the appropriate defences in place. "We are having a perfectly respectable intellectual conversation. Just because you lot are too dim to follow the nuances." "Definitely flirting." Rue grinned at them.

Augustine captured the two ideas in two Latin coinages, which prima facie cut against each other: imago dei and peccatum originis. The former says that humans are unique as a species in our having been created in the image and likeness of God, while the latter says that all humans are born having inherited the legacy of Adam’s error, “original sin.”61

He had always kept a journal. When he was a young man, in a village outside Rotherham in Yorkshire, he had written a daily examination of his conscience...In the days of the butchery, his journal was full of his desire to be a great man, and his self-castigation... he was a good Latin teacher... a good supervisor... but he was not using his unique gifts, whatever they were, he was *going* nowhere, and he meant to go far. He could not read the circular and painful journals now, with their cries of suffocation and their self-condemnatory periods, but he had them in a bank, for they were part of a record, of an accurate record, of the development of the mind and character of William Adamson, who still meant to be a great man. (-Morpho Eugenia, Angels and Insects)

Embrace your multiple personalities. As a kid, I went back and forth between being a metalhead and a Latin dancer. A strange combination? Yes, but it showed me that I should never let one single thing define who I am. I am many things, many voices, many personalities. I try to embrace them rather than suppress them. There’s a time to be disciplined and there’s a time to let go. There’s a time to crowd-surf and a time to practice. The more variety in your life, the more color. Sometimes I think we give ourselves a label: “I’m an accountant.” Or “I’m a mom.” Or “I’m a schoolteacher.” That isn’t all of you, just like dancing wasn’t--and still isn’t--all of me. Give yourself permission to embrace all the facets of you; it’s what makes you unique and special. We are who we tell ourselves we are.

True to a unique tradition of Rome, all the nearby walls had been slathered with that unique institution of the Latin race: graffiti. Daubed in paint of every color were slogans such as Death to the aristocrats! and The shade of Tribune Ateius calls out for blood! and May the curse of Ateius fall on Crassus and all his friends! All of this was scrawled wretchedly and spelled worse. Rome has an extremely high rate of literacy, mostly so that the citizens can practice this particular art form.

He had always kept a journal. When he was a young man, in a village outside Rotherham in Yorkshire, he had written a daily examination of his conscience...In the days of the butchery, his journal was full of his desire to be a great man, and his self-castigation... he was a good Latin teacher... a good supervisor... but he was not using his unique gifts, whatever they were, he was *going* nowhere, and he meant to go far. He could not read the circular and painful journals now, with their cries of suffocation and their self-condemnatory periods, but he had them in a bank, for they were part of a record, of an accurate record, of the development of the mind and character of William Adamson, who still meant to be a great man. (-Angels & Insects: Morpho Eugenia)

C'est donc une tâche puérile, un inutile exercice de rhéteur que de perdre son temps à fabriquer des constitutions. La nécessité et le temps se chargent de les élabo¬rer, quand on laisse agir ces deux facteurs. Le grand historien Macaulay montre dans un passage que devraient apprendre par cœur les politiciens de tous les pays latins que les Anglo-Saxons s'y sont pris ainsi. Après avoir expliqué les bienfaits de lois paraissant, au point de vue de la raison pure, un chaos d'absurdités et de contradictions, il compare les douzaines de constitutions mortes dans les convulsions des peuples latins de l'Europe et de l'Amérique avec celle de l'Angleterre, et fait voir que cette dernière n'a été changée que très lentement, par parties, sous l'influence de nécessités immédiates et jamais de raisonnements spéculatifs. « Ne point s'inquiéter de la symétrie, et s'inquiéter beaucoup de l'utilité ; n'ôter jamais une anomalie unique¬ment parce qu'elle est une anomalie ; ne jamais innover si ce n'est lorsque quelque malaise se fait sentir, et alors innover juste assez pour se débarrasser du malaise ; n'établir jamais une proposition plus large que le cas particulier auquel on remédie ; telles sont les règles qui, depuis l'âge de Jean jusqu'à l'âge de Victoria, ont généra¬lement guidé les délibérations de nos deux cent cinquante parlements. »

If you believe in God (and I do) you must declare Resistance evil, for it prevents us from achieving the life God intended when He endowed each of us with our own unique genius. Genius is a Latin word; the Romans used it to denote an inner spirit, holy and inviolable, which watches over us, guiding us to our calling. A writer writes with his genius; an artist paints with hers; everyone who creates operates from this sacramental center. It is our soul's seat, the vessel that holds our being-in-potential, our star's beacon and Polaris.

But most of us have not had much training in waiting—or at least not enough to prepare us to help others wait in times when they feel highly threatened. Richard Rohr calls this waiting place “liminal space”; liminal comes from the Latin word limina, which means threshold. Liminal space, the place of waiting, is a unique spiritual position where human beings hate to be but where the biblical God is always leading them. It is when you have left the tried and true, but have not yet been able to replace it with anything else. It is when you are finally out of the way. It is when you are between your old comfort zone and any possible new answer. If you are not trained in how to hold anxiety, how to live with ambiguity, how to entrust and wait, you will run . . . anything to flee this terrible cloud of unknowing. In solitude we learn to wait on God for our own life so that when our leadership brings us to the place where the only option for us as a people is to wait on God, we believe it all the way down to the bottom of our being. Because we have met God in the waiting place (rather than running away or giving in to panic or deceiving ourselves into thinking things are better than they are), we are able to stand firm and believe God in a way that makes it possible for others to follow suit. It is a sobering thing to ask ourselves this question: Have I learned enough about how to wait on God in my own life to be able to call others to wait when that is what’s truly needed? Have I done enough spiritual journeying to lead people on this part of their journey?

The United States was unique among Western nations in offering girls classical instruction on a large scale. Hundreds of new female academies instructed their students in the classical languages. Between 1810 and 1870 more than half the catalogs of female academies advertised the teaching of Greek, Latin or both. In 1841 young Harriot Horry Rutledge wrote: Dear Mamma I am reading the Roman History. I followed Greece to where it became a Roman Province. Aunt H says I am fonder of those grim old warriors than of my pretty smiling doll, she says it is because I have not to make them clothes, but it is not, it is because it has life and spirit in it.

In a sermon entitled “The American Dream,” Martin Luther King, Jr., said: You see, the founding fathers were really influenced by the Bible. The whole concept of the imago dei, as it is expressed in Latin, the “image of God,” is the idea that all men have something within them that God injected. Not that they have substantial unity with God, but that every man has a capacity to have fellowship with God. And this gives him a uniqueness, it gives him worth, it gives him dignity. And we must never forget this as a nation: There are no gradations in the image of God. Every man from a treble white to a bass black is significant on God’s keyboard, precisely because every man is made in the image of God. One day we will learn that. We will know one day that God made us to live together as brothers and to respect the dignity and worth of every man. This is why we must fight segregation with all of our nonviolent might.80

The recorded history of the early Britons was to remain in oblivion for the five hundred years that followed the massacre at Bangor. But then an incident occurred that ensured its revival and survival to the present day, even though that revival was itself to last only a matter of a further five hundred years or so. The incident, which occurred sometime in the 1130s, was the presentation of a certain book to a British (i.e. Welsh) monk by an archdeacon of Oxford. The monk's name was Geoffrey of Monmouth, the archdeacon was Walter of Oxford, and the book was a very ancient, possibly unique, copy of the recorded history of the early Britons, written in language so archaic that it needed to be translated quickly into Latin before either the book perished or the language was forgotten.

The English word personality is derived from the Latin word for “mask.” Simply put, our personality is the mask we wear. Taking off that mask, trying to get behind the mask, is the work of the spiritual journey.

Mary, too, has an angel come and promise her a miraculous conception (cf. also 3:23). Gabriel addresses her as “highly favored” (Gk. kecharitōmenē, lit. “having been given grace” or “having been treated graciously” in v. 28). The later Latin mistranslation of this verb by the expression “full of grace” (gratia plena) led to the traditional Roman Catholic conception of Mary as somehow uniquely meritorious or deserving of this honor.

In July 2000 a court in Kalamazoo, Michigan, gave an unusually lenient sentence to José Rodriguez, a member of a street gang called the Latin Kings who had been found guilty of firebombing. According to a report in the Holland Sentinel, a local newspaper, the defendant’s counsel ‘noted that Rodriguez was a unique person because he reads the encyclopedia and dictionary for pleasure’.

For the Church Fathers, ‘daily bread’ had another spiritual meaning. Origen, an early Church Father, pointed out that the Greek word translated here as ‘daily’ (epiousios) was extremely rare – perhaps even invented by the Gospel writer for a special and unique purpose. St. Jerome translated it in Latin as supersubstantialis – ‘super-substantial.’ He had in mind that as God provided manna from Heaven for the hungry Israelites in the desert, he supernaturally nourishes us with Jesus, the Bread of Life. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, this spiritual meaning is twofold – referring to both the Eucharist and the Word of God. He writes, “in the first meaning, we pray for our Sacramental Bread which is consecrated daily in the Church, so that we receive it in the Sacrament, and thus it profits us unto salvation. ... In the second meaning this bread is the Word of God: ‘Not in bread alone doth man live, but in every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God.

Depuis des siècles, le catholicisme a tourné l’âme latine vers l’au delà. Il persuade à la jeune fille qu’elle a été mise en ce monde uniquement pour gagner le ciel. Il s’efforce de lui inculquer le mépris du bonheur humain, des vanités de la terre, le dédain de son corps, l’amour de la souffrance. Il a obtenu ainsi des renoncements sublimes, des puretés exquises. Cet ideal favorise chez la femme naissante la vie intérieure, et l’espèce de claustration à laquelle nos moeurs la condamnent, fait d’elle une être concentre, - en qui la sève refoulée produit parfois des rêves dangereux, toute une vegetation folle d’idées malsaines, de désirs morbides, de sentiments bizarres.

Alejandro de Humboldt National Park Outside of the major cities, the great majority of Cuba is agricultural or undeveloped. Cuba has a number of national parks where it is possible to see and enjoy some plants and animals that are truly unique to the region. Because it is relatively remote and limited in size, the Cuban Government has recognized the significance and sensitivity of the island’s biodiversity. It is for these reasons many of these parks have been set aside as protected areas and for the enjoyment of the people. One of these parks is the Alejandro de Humboldt National Park, named for Alexander von Humboldt a Prussian geographer, naturalist and explorer who traveled extensively in Latin America between 1799 and 1804. He explored the island of Cuba in 1800 and 1801. In the 1950’s during its time of the Cuban Embargo, the concept of nature reserves, on the island, was conceived with development on them continuing into the 1980’s, when a final sighting of the Royal Woodpecker, a Cuban subspecies of the ivory-billed woodpecker known as the “Campephilus principalis,” happened in this area. The Royal Woodpecker was already extinct in its former American habitats. This sighting in 1996, prompted these protected areas to form into a national park that was named Alejandro de Humboldt National Park. Unfortunately no further substantiated sightings of this species has bird has occurred and the species is now most likely extinct. The park, located on the eastern end of Cuba, is tropical and mostly considered a rain forest with mountains and some of the largest rivers in the Caribbean. Because it is the most humid place in Cuba it can be challenging to hike. The park has an area of 274.67 square miles and the elevation ranges from sea level to 3,832 feet at top of El Toldo Peak. In 2001 the park was declared a UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site. Tours are available for those interested in learning more about the flora & fauna, wild life and the natural medicines that are indigenous to these jungles. “The Exciting Story of Cuba” by award winning Captain Hank Bracker is available from Amazon.com, Barnes&Noble.com, BooksAMillion.com and Independent Book Vendors. Read, Like & Share the daily blogs & weekly "From the Bridge" commentaries found on Facebook, Goodreads, Twitter and Captain Hank Bracker’s Webpage.

Project-based homeschooling is concerned with the underlying motives, habits, and attitudes of thinking and learning. However you feel about knowledge and skills — whether you’re a Latin-loving classicist or a relaxed unschooler or somewhere in-between — the point of project-based homeschooling is to devote some time to helping your child direct and manage his own learning. This does not have to comprise your entire curriculum. (Though it can.) It does not have to be the primary focus of your learning life. (Though it can be.) But it is essential. It is the part of your child’s education that is focused on that underlying machinery. It is the part of your child’s learning life that is focused on your child’s very specific and unique interests, talents, and passions. It is the part of your child’s learning when he is not only free to explore whatever interests him, but he receives attention, support, and consistent, dependable mentoring to help him succeed.

As holy fear grows within us according to our increased comprehension of God’s glory, it purifies our motives, frees us from the fear of man, and produces true holiness in our lives. The manifestation of holy fear is immediate and complete obedience to God regardless of whether we see a reason or benefit or how painful it is. With this knowledge, we can now turn our discussion to this unique gift’s benefits, and in this section we’ll focus on what is undoubtably the greatest benefit of all: intimacy with God. The word intimate comes from two Latin words: intus, which means “within,” and intimus, which means “very secret.”1 In joining the two, we come up with “innermost secrets.” This gives a very good picture of intimacy, a word used to describe an affectionate connection between two close friends on levels far deeper than merely an acquaintance, which is someone you’ve met and know slightly but not well.

Seneca, with the explicit intention of consoling his addressee, denies outright that there’s even such a thing as exile. Movement, as he sees it, is a fact of life. The entire universe (mundus) is ceaselessly shifting its position, all is in motion; even the minds of men are constantly exploring and pressing new boundaries, because the mind itself is made of the stuff of the stars and heavenly bodies, which never stand still. It’s in reading such reflections that one again understands how unique and necessary Latin literature is: in its ability to link the smallest occurrence, a personal story or a blip on a timeline, to the cosmic order, which transcends all but which also invests all with a dignity and profundity that stretch beyond the terrestrial.

The introduction of the Mater Magna (Great Mother) came on behalf of the Sibylline Books. The narrative surrounding the introduction, however, also shows the Romans consulting the Delphic Oracle, Greece’s most prestigious oracular shrine. By the end of the third century BCE, before Greece’s actual political subjugation to Rome, the Romans strove to define themselves within a Greek cultural context. Mater Magna linked Rome to its Trojan heritage but, at the same time, emphasized as well as encapsulated the unique relationship Rome had with its Greek cultural heritage. The Romans embraced Greek culture, and while this embrace generated Latin literature, it never incited a redefinition of the political Rome.

The Sexual Episodes When folklore becomes degraded to a minor literary form, as the fairy-faith was degraded to the fairy tales we know today, it natualy loses much of its content: precisely those "adult" details that cannot be allowed to remain in children's books. The direct result of the censorship of spicy details in these marvelous stories is that they become mere occasions for amazement. The Villas-Boas case is hardly appropriate for nursery-school reading, but to eliminate the woman from the story would turn it into a tale without deep symbolic or psychological value. The sexual context is precisely what gives such accounts their significance and their impact. The sexual (and, in some cases mentioned by Budd Hopkins, the sadomasochistic) component of the abduction stories provides an emotional "encoding" that makes them unforgettable. Without the sexual context – without the stories of changelings, human midwives, intermarriage with the Gentry, of which we never hear in modern fairy tales – it is doubtful that the tradition about fairies would have survived through the ages. Nor is that true only of fairies: the most remarkable cases of sexual contact with nonhumans are not found in spicy saucer books, nor in fairy legends; they rest, safely stored away, in the archives of the Catholic Church. To find them, one must first learn Latin and gain entrance into the few libraries where these unique records are preserved. But the accounts one finds there make the Villas-Boas case and contemporary UFO books pale by comparison, as I believe the reader will agree before the end of this chapter.

Who were these people who were Nico's friends at that club? It seemed like an Italian-Spanish coffeeshop. I'm not sure, it was quite far from downtown in a pretty hidden location. I don't remember the name of the club or the street, but if I drive from Urgell I can find it. I took a few pictures outside the reception area while we were waiting outside with Adam to be allowed to enter after being registered as club members. They took our entry into the almost empty private club very seriously, unlike my girlfriend selling weed in their dispensary at age 20, when I just gave her a job elsewhere. The pictures I took were of two skateboards hanging on the wall next to each other. They were spray-painted with smiling devilish faces, the comedy and tragedy masks. („Sock and buskin: The sock and buskin are two ancient symbols of comedy and tragedy. In ancient Greek theatre, actors in tragic roles wore a boot called a buskin (Latin cothurnus). The actors with comedic roles wore only a thin-soled shoe called a sock (Latin soccus).” – Source: Wikipedia) There was another skateboard hanging on the wall, showing the devil smiling with his eyes and teeth and horns only visible in the darkness of the artwork. I doubt they were Italians – they were rather Spaniards – but I never really met anyone else from there besides Nico and Carulo. But I trusted Carulo; he was different. Carulo was a known person in Catalonia. He was known to be the person who was sitting in the Catalan Parliament and rolled a joint and lit it up, smoking during a session as a protest against the law prohibiting marijuana growing and smoking in Spain. Nico told me when he introduced me to Carulo in the summer of 2013, almost a year earlier: “This is the guy you can thank for being able to smoke freely in Catalonia without the police bothering you. Tomas, meet Carulo.” He never really ordered from me if I had met him before. He had no traffic; his growshop was always closed. He was only smoking inside with his younger brother, who was always walking his bull terrier. Their white Bull Terrier was female, half the size of Chico, but she was kind of crazy; you could see in her eyes that she was not normal; she had mental issues. At least, looking into Carulo's eyes and his brother's eyes, I recognized the similar illness in their dog's eyes. In 2014, it had been over four years since I had been working with dogs in my secondary job interpreting Italian and travelling every fifth weekend. Additionally, Huns came to Europe with their animals, including their dogs. There are at least nine unique Hungarian dog breeds.

Among his peers, Pablo Guzmán had a unique upbringing. He graduated from one of New York’s premier academic high schools, Bronx Science, where students were engaged with the political debates of the day, from the Vietnam War to the meaning of black power, thanks to the influence of a history teacher. Guzmán had also been politicized by his Puerto Rican father and maternal grandfather, who was Cuban. Both saw themselves as members of the black diaspora in the Americas. The job discrimination and racist indignities they endured in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and in New York turned them into race men committed to the politics of black pride and racial uplift. When Guzmán was a teenager, his father took him to Harlem to hear Malcolm X speak.188 He also remembers that his Afro-Cuban grandfather, Mario Paulino, regularly convened meetings at his home to discuss world politics with a circle of friends, many of whom were likely connected through their experience at the Tuskegee Institute, the historic black American school of industrial training, to which Paulino had applied from Cuba and at which he enrolled in the early 1920s.189 Perhaps because of the strong black politics of his household, Guzmán identified strongly with the black American community, considered joining the BPP, and called himself “Paul.” His “field studies” in Cuernavaca, Mexico, during his freshman year at SUNY Old Westbury, however, awakened him to the significance of his Latin American roots.

Carintana The name is of Latin origin and means "follower of Christ". Inspired by: Carintana dalle Carceri, Princess of Achaea (13th century). Derivatives: Carristana, Calistana.

In 1908, English humorist Israel Zangwill staged a play titled The Melting Pot. It told the story of two Russian immigrants, David and Vera, who move to the United States, fall in love, and live happily ever after. This play’s title became a rallying cry for the high aspiration that the United States would be a place of multiethnic assimilation. But long before the United States, the Church was history’s original melting pot. As Acts 13 opens, we meet a group of churchmen who come from notably disparate backgrounds: “Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a member of the court of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul” (v. 1). Barnabas was a well-known Jewish teacher and cousin to Mark (cf. Colossians 4: 10). Some believe that at one point he was better known than Paul, for early in Acts, his name is placed first when the two are paired (cf. Acts 11: 30, 12: 25, 13: 7). Simeon and Lucius hailed from Africa. Niger, Simeon’s surname, is a Latin word meaning “black,” indicating possible African origins. Lucius is said to have come from Cyrene, a Roman province on the north coast of Africa. Manaen is “a member of the court of Herod the tetrarch,” that is, Herod Antipas, the ruler who beheaded John the Baptist (cf. Matthew 14: 1–12). The Greek word for “member of the court” is syntrophos, meaning, “brought up with.” Thus, Manaen had probably known Herod all his life. Finally, there is Saul, the famed Jewish antagonist turned evangelist. These are the leaders of the church at Antioch. What a group! And yet, for all their differences, they are united in Christ. Indeed, when the Spirit says, “Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I called them” (Acts 13: 2), there is no quibbling over the Spirit’s appointments. No one protests, “But I wanted to be set apart!” Rather, they gladly lay their hands on these men, ordaining them into their appointed office (cf. 13: 3). Such is the Church: different people from different backgrounds doing different things under one Head, Who is Christ. The Church is a melting pot. But it is not a melting pot in which people’s individual personalities and gifts are congealed into some bland soup. Rather, people’s unique personalities and gifts are deployed according to the Spirit’s purposes. And we, who are “from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 5: 9), are part of this Church. What a glorious group we are in Christ!

MY DEMOGRAPHIC RESEARCH makes it crystal clear that emerging countries, outside of China and a few others like Thailand, will dominate demographic growth in the next global boom. But the even more powerful factor is the urbanization process, with the typical emerging country only 50 percent urbanized, as compared with 85 percent in the typical developed country. In emerging countries, urbanization increases household income as much as three times from its level in rural areas. As people move into the cities, they also climb the social and economic ladder into the middle class. With the cycles swirling around us for the next several years and the force of revolution reshaping our world, emerging markets are in the best position to come booming out the other side. That’s why investors and businesses should be investing more in emerging countries when this crash likely sees its worst, by early 2020. My research is unique when it comes to projecting urbanization, GDP per capita gains from it, and demographic workforce growth trends and peaks in emerging countries. It’s not what I’m most known for, but it’s the most strategic factor in the next global boom, which emerging countries will dominate. As a general guideline, those in South and Southeast Asia, from the Philippines to India and Pakistan, have strong demographic growth, urbanization trends, and productivity gains ahead. This is not the case for China, though. Latin America has mostly strong demographic growth, but limited continued urbanization and productivity gains. Much of the Middle East and Africa have not joined the democratic-capitalism party, but those regions otherwise have the most extreme urbanization and demographic potential. One day they’ll be the best places to invest, but not yet.

The lightest knowledge of Latin literature, for example, would have brought the interested reader into contact with Ovid’s Metamorphoses. This epic but tongue-in-cheek poem opened with a version of the Creation myth that was so similar to the biblical one that it could hardly fail to make an interested reader question the supposed unique truth of Genesis.

Where in the brain does perception occur?” and “What initiates my finger movement, you know, before the large pyramidal cells get fired?”—were the typical questions. “In the prefrontal cortex” was my usual answer, before I skillfully changed the subject or used a few Latin terms that nobody really understood but that sounded scientific enough so that my authoritative-appearing explanations temporarily satisfied them. My inability to give mechanistic and logical answers to these legitimate questions has haunted me ever since—as it likely does every self-respecting neuroscientist.3 How do I explain something that I do not understand? Over the years, I realized that the problem is not unique to me. Many of my colleagues—whether they admit it or not—feel the same way.

Henrique Dubugras, the co-founder of Brex, told me he was most excited about companies focused on rebuilding insurance. Mario Schlosser, the co-founder of Oscar Health, pointed to the wealth of opportunities still left to revamp healthcare. Max Mullen, who co-founded Instacart, raved about the future of food; Max Levchin of Affirm and PayPal talked about the importance of “clean water, access to food, climate change, and improvement in education.” For Neha Narkhede of Confluent, it was “the consumerization of the enterprise,” meaning a bottom-up adoption of tools to make enterprise sales happen. Michelle Zatlyn, the co-founder of Cloudflare, was excited about the future of social networks. And on the life science and healthcare side, Arie Belldegrun of Kite Pharma was excited about cell therapy, while Nat Turner of Flatiron Health was keen on the application of data in “neurology, neurodegenerative disease, and cardiovascular diseases.” The most interesting response came from Tony Fadell, the co-founder of Nest. “I think it’s more important to look at the markets than spaces and industries,” he told me. Beyond Silicon Valley, big changes are happening in India, in Southeast Asia, and across Latin America. “These places are going through massive transitions, just like China has already. You need to pay attention to these new markets and see what unique problems you can solve for these markets. You always need to think in the context of the problems of the place you’re going after.