Ideology and Hellish Actions

I've always asked why do some people perform atrocious and evil acts by any human standard and not feel guilt or remorse. Some even feel good about themselves. The things I'm talking about are hideous things like torturing children, for example, killing completely innocent people. I don't have a problem with psychopaths and madmen; but sane people performing these acts thinking it's OK makes me ask why? If the same were done to them or their loved ones, they wouldn't want to go to lunch as if nothing had happened; a Psycho on the other hand might want to participate.

The creature illustrated on the left was legally indited with numerous hellish offenses toward Muslims during the Serbian occupation of Bosnia, among them: many counts of murder, torture, and rape.

So, why does this occur? I think one reason lies in the effect of ideology on our perception of the world. Ideology changes the way we see the world. The creature above or any other cruel person don't see an image of an innocent human which triggers a feeling of compassion or sympathy; they see the image of someone bad, base, ugly, evil, etc. because of their demented ideology not their demented psyche (which is an important nuance).

But ideology is not all bad. Correct ideologies result in righteous actions. For example, Muslims perceive children of all faiths as heaven-dwellers; every children goes to heaven if they die before maturity. They are not to be harmed in any way, along with women and the elderly, during war, any other time for that matter.

Another problem with a faulty or flawed ideology is, sometimes, it makes its adherents view bad people, things, or events as good. A good example is the man mentioned above; he was sentenced to 23 years in prison. This person should be executed, but because the judicial system he was tried by perceives, because of its ideology, that you can't punish killing by killing then he was imprisoned. In Islam this guy would have been killed because killing itself is not judged as good or bad, but rather the reason of killing is judged whether right or wrong. If you kill someone because he was trying to kill you or your loved one, you did the right thing. If you kill someone because he is a mass murderer to prohibit others form doing the same, then you are doing the right thing. If you kill because you don't like someone or because you are angry, you have done the wrong thing.

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