User blog comment:4Ferelden/A new interpretation of Starchild's motivation./@comment-1679409-20120703173310

I'm thinking that it's not really that the Catalyst wanted to make organics suffer. As I noted below, he says (at least in the Extended Cut) that the Reapers harvest both organic and synthetic life. I think the creation of the Reapers and the cycle of extinction comes more from his interpretation of his directive, which is to prevent the destruction that comes from organic-synthetic war. But his creators didn't place blocks to prevent him from choosing certain paths and didn't program him well enough for him to think like an organic and to consider the priorities of organics. To a synthetic like the Catalyst, a body is just a platform or a shell; there's nothing special or sentimental about any particular body. Organics, however, think quite differently. He also apparently lacked the ability to appreciate free will. Afterall, he is a servant created for a specific purpose.

Something similar happens in an episode of the 90's X-Men cartoon that I vaguely remember. Someone created the Sentinels, huge mutant-hunting robots to protect "normal" humans from mutants. At some point, the Sentinels decide to repress everyone. Their creator says something along the lines of, "Sentinels are supposed to protect humans from mutants," to which the head Sentinel replies something like, "Mutants are humans. We are here to protect humans from themselves."