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Notes -
You have a good point. It was not my intention to say that animal cruelty is completely outside of the realm of human nature.
And yet my point also holds true. Animal cruelty videos abound online, yet very few people seem to be worried that they're going to erase, alter, or blur the taboo about it or "unlock" something in people that makes them find it appealing again. (And I still stand by the notion that this common wisdom is correct. After all, animal cruelty videos are probably less popular online than sexualized content of minors despite more legal and accessible. If it is really in human nature to find cruel animal deaths family fun, then why aren't people having fun with the greatest compendium of them in existence?) Yet a lot of people seem very worried about that in regards to sexualization of minors. It seems to me like one taboo is "harder" than the other.
My theory to explain this is that the evolution of the taboo against animal cruelty came with the gradual acceptance of the reality that animals are equivalently sentient (but not sapient) to humans, can feel pain, etc. (if you recall, even thinkers as prominent as Descartes used to completely reject that notion not too distantly in the past) and that people pretty much actually fully believe that. I think it's also that people may have found it fun, but weren't particularly tempted to do it on a raw, biological level, making it a lot easier to give it up.
So basically while it was perfectly within the Average Joe's nature to sadistically (not that they thought it was) torture animals because it produced visually amusing reactions in them, it stopped being so once they realized that their reactions of pain were not simply mechanistic reflexes but actually the same kind of pain they themselves might experience (since your average person I don't think is much of an inherent sadist/sociopath). You can see this in how people pretty much still have no problem stomping insects vigorously because most people do not believe on an empirical basis that they are capable of feeling pain like humans and more complex animals.
(This is similarly to how medical professionals used to not provide anesthesia for babies because they thought they didn't feel pain. Do you imagine that parents sanctioning the torture of their own offspring is common in our nature or that they legitimately just believed that?)
With minor sexualization etc. it seems to me like it must be the opposite then. People must not really fully believe that much in the nebulous collection of beliefs that supposedly puts minors beyond sexual availability (even and especially since they themselves regularly ignore this and try to make themselves sexually available, including to adults), and they do have a biological urge for it which makes it harder to just give it up than casual animal cruelty.
So I do think your point in fact overall supports mine, given the divergent ways that the two taboos have developed.
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