Your question reminds me of the conceptual artist Marina Abramovic, and her 1974 piece called Rhythm 0, where she wanted to explore the interaction between artist and audience. She gave the audience permission to do anything to her body that they wanted, but that's not where the issue lay, since she gave consent.

After a certain point, members of the audience began physically harming her with the more "stabby" equipment she had lying on a table nearby, until she had to be forcibly removed from her own art piece for fear of her life. I think the question could probably be asked just how many of our fellow human beings are only as "civilized" in their behavior as the law tells them to be. They're the kind of people who only pay lip service to being civil, but are, on the down low, psychopaths.