Quote Originally Posted by Grey_Wolf_c View Post

You'll get no argument from me that dwarven society is horribly, deeply flawed, because of Loki's bet. It is a society in a constant, never-ending defensive crouch. I just saw someone post a "what race would you want to be in OotS" thread that opens with "dwarves" and all I could think is "only someone that hasn't though through the implications of being a dwarf in OotS could possibly want to be one". And that stings, because I personally love dwarves, and I can't enjoy them in OotS, because none of the characteristics I price in dwarves are freely chosen: they are a necessity of the stupid wager. All their autonomy was taken away from them by Loki, Hel and (marginally) Thor, and I hate that that is the case.

Disclaimer: I'm not a philosophy student, so I'm about to butcher Kant, but what little I got from having to study philosophy is a discussion about Pascal's Wager and Kant's imperative. If you only do something good because you want to avoid a bad consequence, can you really be said to be good? My conclusion was no, for the same reason that Kant said that doing the right thing when you wanted to do it anyway is not actually a notch in your belt, so to speak: it is only when you act against your own actual wishes to do good that it "counts".
that can be said of anyone in oots, as they will be sent to the lower planes if they misbehave. Heck, it can be said also of many real world religion.
For society, it is a necessary curtailing of personal freedom; society can only function if a large majority abides by certain rules, and while some will certainly abide just because they find those rules right, they won't be enough. So society must set up a convoluted system of incentives and a straigthforward system of punishments to make sure that even people who don't give a damn will behave because it's in their best interest.
It makes it awfully difficult to judge someone based purely on their actions, though.