Seems to be a sad fact of human nature that the majority of people's "shock" threshold can be raised simply by something becoming commonplace. Their own free thought on these various matters seems to be overridden by something becoming almost "normal".
For example, people these days can quite easily joke and make light of the various ummm,
preferences catered to in your average dose of spam - thanks to the rise of t'Internet, things get shoved down our throats (poor choice of expression,
I know!
) that only fully paid-up members of the Dirty Mac Brigade would have had access to a decade or two ago. Things that would have required either sneaking into seediest Soho under cover of darkness, even breaking the law.
But as it becomes almost mainstream, it loses its capacity to shock most people. Doesn't matter what it is.
I often think if people started to get pop-ups of child pornography, their attitudes would change to it. I fear we may be headed that way. We're becoming more and more immune. No-one seems to bat an eyelid at bestiality anymore, because of the Internet. Yet every natural human instinct would tell us to be disgusted at it.
I am a strong believer that "morals" are pure Darwinism in action - we think murder, harming children, and for that matter f**king animals is wrong because in the vast majority of cases it does nothing to protect or advance the human species. Sadly I also believe that our complex social psychology can lead to our other basic instincts being overridden when something becomes "ordinary" enough.
It doesn't matter how saturated our culture becomes with pornography, I still find the same things as disgusting as I ever did, no matter how many times I see them
. I don't consider myself a prude, maybe I'm the only one though...