If you think this is brutal, there are several Asian cooking methods that involve cooking or filleting and then serving the fish (or shrimp, lobster, octopus, etc) while it's still alive so you can see it moving around. Ikizukuri (Japan) is live fish sashimi - the fish has the spine severed then is filleted with the organs intact, then the slices are served on its own body, with the head so you can see it's still breathing (or trying to). Yin Yang fish (China) has the fish deep fried while the head is kept out and wet so it can keep breathing, then covered in sauce and served still thrashing around.
And as pointed out by MacGregor, shinkei jime is actually pretty humane compared to how most fish are treated (gilled, beaten, thrown in the cooler to thrash around). When you do this, it's absolutely not feeling anything any more.