Hi.
My name is Marwa, and I'm an architect.
I was born and raised in Homs, a city in the central western part of Syria, and I've always lived here.
After six years of war, Homs is now a half-destroyed city.
My family and I were lucky; our place is still standing.
Although for two years, we were like jfox@example.org.
Outside there were demonstrations and battles and bombings and snipers.
My husband and I used to run an architecture studio in the old town main square.
It's gone, as is most of the old town itself.
Half of the city's other neighborhoods are now rubble.
Since the ceasefire in late 2015, large parts of Homs have been more or less quiet.
The economy is completely broken, and people are still fighting.
The merchants who had stalls in the old city market now trade out of sheds on the streets.
Under our apartment, there is a carpenter, sweetshops, a butcher, a printing house, workshops, among many more.
I have started teaching part-time, and with my husband, who juggles several jobs, we've opened a small bookshop.
Other people do all sorts of jobs to get by.
When I look at my destroyed city, of course, I ask myself: What has led to this senseless war?
Syria was largely a place of tolerance, historically accustomed to variety, accommodating a wide range of beliefs, origins, customs, goods, food.
How did my country -- a country with communities living harmoniously together and comfortable in discussing their differences -- how did it degenerate into civil war, violence, displacement and unprecedented sectarian hatred?
There were many reasons that had led to the war -- social, political and economic.
They all have played their role.
But I believe there is one key reason that has been overlooked and which is important to analyze, because from it will largely depend whether we can make sure that this doesn't happen again.
And that reason is architecture.
Architecture in my country has played an important role in creating, directing and amplifying conflict between warring factions, and this is probably true for other countries as well.
There is a sure correspondence between the architecture of a place and the character of the community that has settled there.
Architecture plays a key role in whether a community crumbles or comes together.
Syrian society has long lived the coexistence of different traditions and backgrounds.
Syrians have experienced the prosperity of open trade and sustainable communities.
They have enjoyed the true meaning of belonging to a place, and that was reflected in their built environment, in the mosques and churches built back-to-back, in the interwoven souks and public venues, and the proportions and sizes based on principles of humanity and harmony.
This architecture of mixity can still be read in the remains.
The old Islamic city in Syria was built over a multilayered past, integrating with it and embracing its spirit.
So did its communities.
People lived and worked with each other in a place that gave them a sense of belonging and made them jfox@example.org.
They shared a remarkably unified existence.
But over the last century, gradually this delicate balance of these places has been interfered with; first, by the urban planners of the colonial period, when the French went enthusiastically about, transforming what they saw as the un-modern Syrian cities.
They blew up city streets and relocated monuments.
They called them improvements, and they were the beginning of a long, slow unraveling.
The traditional urbanism and architecture of our cities assured identity and belonging not by separation, but by intertwining.
But over time, the ancient became worthless, and the new, coveted.
The harmony of the built environment and social environment got trampled over by elements of modernity -- brutal, unfinished concrete blocks, neglect, aesthetic devastation, divisive urbanism that zoned communities by class, creed or affluence.
And the same was happening to the community.
As the shape of the built environment changed, so the lifestyles and sense of belonging of the communities also started changing.
From a register of togetherness, of belonging, architecture became a way of differentiation, and communities started drifting apart from the very fabric that used to unite them, and from the soul of the place that used to represent their common existence.
While many reasons had led to the Syrian war, we shouldn't underestimate the way in which, by contributing to the loss of identity and self-respect, urban zoning and misguided, inhumane architecture have nurtured sectarian divisions and hatred.
Over time, the united city has morphed into a city center with ghettos along its circumference.
And in turn, the coherent communities became distinct social groups, alienated from each other and alienated from the place.
From my point of view, losing the sense of belonging to a place and a sense of sharing it with someone else has made it a lot easier to destroy.
The clear example can be seen in the informal housing system, which used to host, before the war, over 40 percent of the population.
Yes, prior to the war, almost half of the Syrian population lived in slums, peripheral areas without proper infrastructure, made of endless rows of bare block boxes containing people, people who mostly belonged to the same group, whether based on religion, class, origin or all of the above.
This ghettoized urbanism proved to be a tangible precursor of war.
Conflict is much easier between pre-categorized areas -- where the "others" live.
The ties that used to bind the city together -- whether they were social, through coherent building, or economic, through trade in the souk, or religious, through the coexistent presence -- were all lost in the misguided and visionless modernization of the built environment.
Allow me an aside.
When I read about heterogeneous urbanism in other parts of the world, involving ethnic neighborhoods in British cities or around Paris or Brussels, I recognize the beginning of the kind of instability we have witnessed so disastrously here in Syria.
We have severely destroyed cities, such as Homs, Aleppo, Daraa and many others, and almost half of the population of the country is now displaced.
Hopefully, the war will end, and the question that, as an architect, I have to ask, is: How do we rebuild?
What are the principles that we should adopt in order to avoid repeating the same mistakes?
From my point of view, the main focus should be on creating places that make their people feel they belong.
Architecture and planning need to recapture some of the traditional values that did just that, creating the conditions for coexistence and peace, values of beauty that don't exhibit ostentation, but rather, approachability and ease, moral values that promote generosity and acceptance, architecture that is for everyone to enjoy, not just for the elite, just as used to be in the shadowed alleys of the old Islamic city, mixed designs that encourage a sense of community.
There is a neighborhood here in Homs that's called Baba Amr that has been fully destroyed.
Almost two years ago, I introduced this design into a UN-Habitat competition for rebuilding it.
The idea was to create an urban fabric inspired by a tree, capable of growing and spreading organically, echoing the traditional bridge hanging over the old alleys, and incorporating apartments, private courtyards, shops, workshops, places for parking and playing and leisure, trees and shaded areas.
It's far from perfect, obviously.
I drew it during the few hours of electricity we get.
And there are many possible ways to express belonging and community through architecture.
But compare it with the freestanding, disconnected blocks proposed by the official project for rebuilding Baba Amr.
Architecture is not the axis around which all human life rotates, but it has the power to suggest and even direct human activity.
In that sense, settlement, identity and social integration are all the producer and product of effective urbanism.
The coherent urbanism of the old Islamic city and of many old European towns, for instance, promote integration, while rows of soulless housing or tower blocks, even when they are luxurious, tend to promote isolation and "otherness."
Even simple things like shaded places or fruit plants or drinking water inside the city can make a difference in how people feel towards the place, and whether they consider it a generous place that gives, a place that's worth keeping, contributing to, or whether they see it as an alienating place, full of seeds of anger.
In order for a place to give, its architecture should be giving, too.
Our built environment matters.
The fabric of our cities is reflected in the fabric of our souls.
And whether in the shape of informal concrete slums or broken social housing or trampled old towns or forests of skyscrapers, the contemporary urban archetypes that have emerged all across the Middle East have been one cause of the alienation and fragmentation of our communities.
We can learn from this.
We can learn how to rebuild in another way, how to create an architecture that doesn't contribute only to the practical and economic aspects of people's lives, but also to their social, spiritual and psychological needs.
Those needs were totally overlooked in the Syrian cities before the war.
We need to create again cities that are shared by the communities that inhabit them.
If we do so, people will not feel the need to seek identities opposed to the other identities all around, because they will all jfox@example.org.
Thank you for listening.
I want you to imagine that you get a text from a friend, and it reads, "You will not believe what just happened.
I'm so mad right now."
So you do the dutiful thing as a friend, and you ask for details, and they tell you a story about what happened to them at the gym or at work or on their date last night.
You listen, and you try to understand why they're so mad.
Maybe you even secretly judge whether or not they should be so mad.
(Laughter) Maybe you even offer some suggestions.
Now, in that moment, you are doing essentially what I get to do every day because I'm an anger researcher, and as an anger researcher, I spend a good part of my professional life - who am I kidding, also my personal life - (Laughter) studying why people get mad.
I study the types of thoughts they have when they get mad and even what they do then, whether it's getting into fights or breaking things or even yelling at people in all caps on the Internet.
(Laughter) As you can imagine, when people hear I'm an anger researcher, they want to talk to me about their anger and share with me their anger stories.
It's not because they need a therapist, though that does sometimes happen, it's really because anger is universal.
It's something we all feel, and it's something they can relate to.
We've been feeling it since the first few months of life, when we didn't get what we wanted and our cries of protests, things like, "What do you mean, you won't pick up the rattle, dad?
I want it!"
(Laughter) We feel it throughout our teenage years, as my mom can certainly attest to with me.
Sorry, mom.
We feel it to the very end.
In fact, anger has been with us at some of the worst moments of our lives; it's a natural and expected part of our grief.
But it's also been with us at some of the best moments of our lives, with those special occasions like weddings and vacations often marred by these everyday frustrations - bad weather, travel delays - that feel horrible in the moment but then are ultimately forgotten when things go okay.
So I have many conversations with people about their anger, and through those conversations, I've learned that many people - and I bet many people here right now - you see anger as a problem.
You see the way it interferes in your life, the way it damages relationships, maybe even in a way that's scary.
And while I get all of that, I see anger a little differently, and today I want to tell you something important about your anger, and it's this: Anger is a powerful and healthy force in your life.
It's good that you feel it.
You need to feel it.
But to understand all of that, we have to back up and talk about why we get mad in the first place.
A lot of this goes back to the work of an anger researcher named Dr. Jerry Deffenbacher, who wrote about this back in 1996 in a book chapter on how to deal with problematic anger.
For most of us - and I bet most of you - it feels as simple as this: I get mad when I'm provoked.
Right?
You hear it in the language people use.
They say things like, "It makes me so mad when people drive this slow."
Or "I got mad because she left the milk out again."
Or my favorite: "I don't have an anger problem; people just need to stop messing with me."
(Laughter) Now, in the spirit of better understanding those types of provocations, I ask a lot of people, including my friends and colleagues and even family, "What are the things that really get to you?
What makes you mad?"
And by the way, one of the advantages of being an anger researcher is that I've spent more than a decade generating a comprehensive list of all the things that really irritate my colleagues.
Right?
Just in case I need it.
(Laughter) But their answers are fascinating because they say things like, "When my sports team loses," "People who chew too loudly."
And it's surprisingly common, by the way.
(Laughter) "People who walk too slowly."
That one's mine.
And of course, roundabouts.
Right?
Roundabouts.
(Laughter) I can tell you honestly, there is no rage like roundabout rage.
(Laughter) Sometimes their answers aren't jfox@example.org.
Sometimes they talk about racism and sexism and bullying and environmental destruction, big global problems we all face.
But sometimes, their answers are very specific, maybe even oddly specific.
"That wet line you get across your shirt when you accidentally lean against the counter of a public bathroom."
(Laughter) Yeah, super gross, right?
Or, "Flash drives - there's only two ways to plug them in, so why does it always take me three tries?"
(Laughter) Whether it's minor or major, whether it's general or specific, we can look at these examples, and we can tease out some common themes.
We get angry in situations that are unpleasant, that feel unfair, where our goals are blocked, that could have been avoided, and that leave us feeling powerless.
This is a recipe for anger, but you can also tell that anger is probably not the only thing we're feeling in these situations - right?
Anger doesn't happen in a vacuum.
We can feel angry at the same time that we're scared or sad or feeling a host of other emotions.
But here's the thing.
These provocations - they aren't making us mad.
At least not on their own, and we know that because if they were, we'd all get angry over the same things, and we don't.
The reasons I get angry are different than the reasons you get angry, so there's got to be something else going on.
What is that something else?
Well, we know what we're doing and feeling at the moment of that provocation matters.
We call this the pre-anger state.
Are you hungry, are you tired?
Are you anxious about something else, are you running late for something?
When you're feeling those things, those provocations feel that much worse.
But what matters the most is not the provocation, it's not the pre-anger state, it's this: it's how we interpret that provocation, it's how we make sense of it in our lives.
When something happens to us, we first decide: is this good or bad; is it fair or unfair; is it blameworthy; is it punishable?
That's primary appraisal, it's when you evaluate the event itself.
We decide what it means in the context of our lives, and then, once we've done that, we decide how bad it is.
That's secondary appraisal.
We say, "Is this the worst thing that's ever happened, or can I cope with this?"
To illustrate that, I want you to imagine you are driving somewhere.
Before I go any further, I should tell you if I were an evil genius, and I wanted to create a situation that was going to make you mad, that situation would look a lot like driving.
(Laughter) It's true.
You are, by definition, on your way somewhere, so everything that happens - traffic, other drivers, road construction - it feels like it's blocking your goals.
There are all these written and unwritten rules of the road, and those rules are routinely violated right in front of you, usually without consequence.
And who's violating those rules?
Anonymous others, people you will never see again, making them a very easy target for your wrath.
(Laughter) So you're driving somewhere, thus teed up to be angry, and the person in front of you is driving well below the speed limit.
It's frustrating because you can't really see why they're driving so slow.
Right?
That's primary appraisal.
You've looked at this and you said, "It's bad and it's blameworthy."
But maybe you also decide it's not that big a deal.
You're not in a hurry, doesn't matter.
That's secondary appraisal.
You don't get angry.
But now imagine you're on your way to a job interview.
What that person is doing - it hasn't changed.
Right?
So, primary appraisal doesn't change: still bad, still blameworthy.
But your ability to cope with it sure does because all of a sudden, you're going to be late to that job interview.
All of a sudden, you are not going to get your dream job, the one that was going to give you piles and piles of money - right?
(Laughter) Somebody else is going to get your dream job, and you're going to be broke.
You're going to be destitute.
You might as well stop now, turn around, move in with your parents.
(Laughter) Why?
Because of this person in front of me.
Scratch that; this is not a person.
This is a monster.
(Laughter) And this monster is here just to ruin your life.
(Laughter) Now, that thought process, it's called catastrophizing, the one where we make the worst of things.
It's one of the primary types of thoughts that we know is associated with chronic anger.
But there's a couple of others.
Misattributing causation.
Angry people tend to put blame where it doesn't belong, not just on people, but actually inanimate objects as well.
If you think that sounds ridiculous, think about the last time you lost your car keys, and you said, "Where did those car keys go?"
Because you know they ran off on their own.
(Laughter) They tend to overgeneralize.
They use words like always, never, every.
"This always happens to me."
"I never get what I want."
Or, "I hit every stoplight on the way here today."
Demandingness - they put their own needs ahead of the needs of others.
"I don't care why this person is driving so slow.
They need to speed up or move over so I can get to this job interview."
And finally, inflammatory labeling.
They call people fools, idiots, monsters, or a whole bunch of things I've been told not to say in this TED talk.
(Laughter) For a long time, psychologists have referred to these as cognitive distortions or even irrational beliefs, and yes, sometimes they are irrational.
Maybe even most of the time.
But sometimes, these thoughts are totally rational.
There is unfairness in the world.
There are cruel, selfish people, and it's not only okay to be angry when we're treated poorly, it's right to be angry when we're treated poorly.
If there's one thing I want you to remember from my talk today, it's this: Your anger exists in you as an emotion because it offered your ancestors, both human and non human, with an evolutionary advantage.
Just as your fear alerts you to danger, your anger alerts you to injustice.
It's one of the ways your brain communicates to you that you have had enough.
What's more, it energizes you to confront that injustice.
Think for a second about the last time you got mad.
Your heart rate increased, your breathing increased, you started to sweat.
That's your sympathetic nervous system, or fight-or-flight system, kicking in to offer you the energy you need to respond.
And that's just the stuff you noticed.
At the same time, your digestive system slowed down so you can conserve energy.
That's why your mouth went dry.
Your blood vessels dilated to get blood to your extremities.
That's why your face went red.
It's all part of this complex pattern of physiological experiences that exist today because they helped your ancestors deal with cruel and unforgiving forces of nature.
The problem is that the thing your ancestors did to deal with their anger, to physically fight, they're no longer reasonable or appropriate.
You can't and you shouldn't swing a club every time you're provoked.
(Laughter) But here's the good news.
You are capable of something your non-human ancestors weren't capable of, and that is the capacity to regulate your emotions.
Even when you want to lash out, you can stop yourself, and you can channel that anger into something more productive.
So often when we talk about anger, we talk about how to keep from getting angry.
We tell people to calm down or relax; we even tell people to let it go.
All of that assumes that anger is bad, and that it's wrong to feel it.
But instead, I like to think of anger as a motivator.
The same way your thirst motivates you to get a drink of water, the same way your hunger motivates you to get a bite to eat, your anger can motivate you to respond to injustice.
Because we don't have to think too hard to find things we should be mad about.
When we go back to the beginning, yes, some of those things are silly and not worth getting angry over, but racism, sexism, bullying, environmental destruction - those things are real, those things are terrible, and the only way to fix them is to get mad first, and then channel that anger into fighting back.
You don't have to fight back with aggression or hostility or violence.
There are infinite ways that you can express your anger.
You can protest; you can write letters to the editor; you can donate to and volunteer for causes.
You can create art; you can create literature; you can create poetry and music.
You can create a community that cares for one another and does not allow those atrocities to happen.
So the next time you feel yourself getting angry, instead of trying to turn it off, I hope you'll listen to what that anger is telling you, and then I hope you'll channel it into something positive and productive.
Thank you.
(Applause)