After going through three gripping days watching the terrorist attacks unfold in India and the way the terrorists executed innocent people, it really makes you think of what it takes to just turn off your conscience.
We see these occurrences in different situations. Take the case in Vienna, Austria wherein “Natascha Kampusch was held in a secret cellar by her kidnapper Wolfgang Priklopil for more than eight years, until she escaped on August 23, 2006” or the other case wherein “Josef Fritzl forced his daughter Elisabeth into the basement of the family’s home in Amstetten, north-west Austria, on August 24 1984, when she was 18 and started the saga of imprisoning, beating and sexually abusing his daughter in a windowless cellar for 24 years, during which time he fathered her seven children“. Or the case of the Saddam Hussein of the world, Hitler just to name a few and the violence or abuse by individuals or governments in the name of state, politics, religion etc.
There is also the case of wherein, sometime we just partly turn off our 
conscience like in the case of Darfur where people are suffering but not much action is being taken and the hue and cry over it is nothing like that over Palestine. Give the Palestinians their due and also others suffering elsewhere.
Temporary insanity is the name given to those cases when some people after having a particular incident occur in their life do really horrific things. Just think of the cases of domestic violence and violence by youngsters. Post partum depression (PPD), also called post natal depression, is a form of clinical depression which can affect women, and less frequently men, after childbirth and also the reason stated behind some newly delivered mothers have killed their children. Maybe the the medical community has another name.
All in all, some people seem to have control over switching off their conscience to do things they would not normally do and others have it switched off by mental conditions.
“Beware and be warned”. Is your conscience on or off.
