Cruelty might be very human, and it might be cultural, but it's not acceptable.

Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.

I must be cruel only to be kind;
Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.

Kindness is the beginning of cruelty.

People. They're really innately, inherently gentle and compassionate and kind. That's what wrings, wrenches...something. Your entrails, maybe. The member of the mob who holds up the whole ceremony for seconds or even minutes while he dislodges a family of bugs or lizards from the log he is about to put on the fire.

If ingenious exists in animal cruelty it also exists in animal kindness..