First of all, there is a distinction between thoughtlessness and selfishness that has not been addressed yet. It is possible to be thoughtlessly selfish and it is possible to be deliberately selfish. Deliberate selfishness may be malicious, but thoughtless selfishness does not carry the same weight.

[ASIDE] Frankly, I'd rather deal with someone who is being deliberately selfish. They are more predictable, easier to deal with and, on an intellectual level at least, easier to comprehend. I'd rather look at person A and think "Wow. Person A is a right bastard. He obviously puts his own interests ahead of any consideration or respect for my rights. I hate him." as opposed to looking at person B and thinking "Wow. Person B is a pathetic bastard. He either isn't bright enough to understand that what he's doing infringes on my rights and my comfort, or he isn't even bright enough to realize that I am an autonomous person with my own desires, some of which might conflict with his. I hate him and hold him in contempt."

That's just me though. I value intentionality to an unrealistic degree. I'd rather be deliberately fucked than incidentally fucked, because I can at least respect the effort and skill that went into the purposeful fucking... and I can take steps to protect myself from being deliberately fucked in the future. It's much harder to protect yourself from someone who just doesn't get it.[/ASIDE]

Second, concepts like malice and evil lack a certain degree of practical application. The words imply a heft and stature that is lacking in most everyone's actions. There just aren't that many actions out there that I would be willing to describe as "malicious" (i.e. "acting with a desire to cause pain, injury or distress to another").

I don't think that the underlying motivation of most behavior is a desire to cause pain, injury or distress to another. I think that a lot of behavior includes a willingness to cause pain, injury or distress, but willingness isn't necessarily desire. A selfish person might steal candy from a baby because, duh, free candy. Candy is good. A malicious person would steal candy because they would enjoy the baby's distress.

There just aren't many people like that in the world. It's a shame too... life would be easier if there were more absolute bastards and less petty, inconsiderate shmucks. It would really set up the dividing lines a bit more clearly.

That's all just semantics though. As mytwocents points out, selfishness and thoughtlessness are bad... and on a certain level, they may indeed imply a degree of deliberation, even if that deliberation is only a willing omission of consideration. There comes a point where ignorance of other people's desires and rights no longer carries any weight.

Also, astralounge's nameless friend is a useless shmuck. Someday I hope to be in a position to do him some small wrong that will cause him a degree of unhappiness and discomfort.

Malice.

And selfish malice at that, since I'm willing to do it for my own pleasure, even though I have no doubt it will cause distress to Astralounge. That's a price I'm willing to pay in order to attain the feeling of satisfaction I expect to receive from delivering a shmuck-slap to this guy.

Malice.

I've been thinking about the concept of expecting people to change on your behalf. I was having difficulty reconciling how I felt about this idea with how I wanted to feel about the idea, until I realized that there was a missing distinction that needed to be clarified.

I think that people are within their rights to ask their friends and lovers to change behaviors that are troublesome to them (though even this cannot, in my opinion, be done with impunity). Relationships are, of course, give and take, and it is to be expected that each person makes accommodations for the other person or people that they care about.

However, I don't think it is acceptable to ask people to change themselves. Modify their behaviors, yes (in certain circumstances), but not change how they think or feel or believe. I've been asked to do that before, and it is neither possible, nor comfortable, nor acceptable.

Just my own take.

Now a puzzle: This is in response to mytwocents, who says:

...you can have every right to call them on it and to expect them to change their behavior. Being selfish and self-centered shows a lack of respect for another person�s happiness and a lack of recognition of their importance in the world.

I'm not saying I disagree. I don't. I feel the same way. But there seems to be a problem with this in application... specifically, isn't it selfish to expect someone to change their behavior out of deference to your own happiness and importance? Isn't that implying that your happiness and importance is more significant than their own?

Pared down, what I'm asking is this: Doing activity X makes person A happy, but it bothers person B. Is person B justified in expecting person A to stop engaging in activity X? If so, why? If not, why not? How do you determine whose happiness is most important?

Obviously there isn't a clear-cut answer to this. I guess that my take on the situation is that there are numerous possible cases where person B has every right to expect person A to stop engaging in activity X, and there are numerous other cases where person B has no right to expect person A to stop engaging in activity X.

More problematic is the fact that what dictates person B's rights is some kind of nebulous societal standard rather than a quantifiable formula. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with how strongly person A feels about activity X or how strongly person B feels about activity X... though it may, I suppose, depend on the relative strength of one person's desires in comparison to the others.

Some examples: I like onions and Blaise loathes onions. If Blaise comes over to my apartment while I'm chopping up onions and finds the smell repulsive, does she have the right to expect me to stop chopping onions?

If I didn't know how much Blaise hated onions, and she came over for dinner, do I have the right to expect her to eat the onion stew I made? Does she have the right to expect me to make her something different?

If I really want to go to the movie theater and watch Things Blowing Up Without A Plot... Plus Boobs!, but Sarah really wants to see Sensitive Girls And the Many Wonderful Guys Who Love Them (A Life-Affirming Growth Experience), which one of us has the right to expect a concession from the other?

What if I hated cats and wanted to visit Kim? Do I have the right to expect her to shut her cats in the bedroom while I visit? Does she have the right to expect me to pet her cats and be friendly with them when I visit?

Kacy drives faster than I'm normally comfortable with. When we're caravanning, should she slow down? Should I speed up?

These are all fairly minor issues, but there are obviously bigger ones that fall along exactly the same lines. If I want to go to bed with Sarah at 3:00 AM every night, and Sarah wants to go to bed with me at 11:00 PM every night, when do we go to bed?

To be honest, I don't have a real answer (even in my own head) for any of these hypothetical situations.

I guess the long and the short of this is that in my opinion, one person's unhappiness with a situation is not necessarily enough to justify asking someone else to change their behavior. In some cases it is, in some cases it isn't... I'd like to hear from everyone how they think such situations should be worked out or resolved.

For my part, I think maybe the trick to resolving these things is to acknowledge that no one has the right to happiness. Happiness and satisfaction with a situation are things that you need to struggle toward and work for, and even when you get them, they won't be perfect... and you don't have the right to expect them to be perfect.

Now that I'm at the end of this, I hope that I haven't said anything irritating or offensive; my thoughts just kind of kept branching out as I wrote, and I found myself genuinely emotionally engaged in a topic I was writing about for the first time in ages.

Anyway, I wasn't trying to argue with anyone. I just find this topic to be an interesting one, and I'm very curious about everyone else's take on the idea of expecting other people to change. I'm hoping that everyone writes about this now.

[By everyone I don't just mean Blaise and Kacy... I also mean Tim, Audrey and Kim. Get in on the discussion folks!]