Rawslian Proceduralism as Civilizational Suicide

By John-Michael Kuczynski

When Western civilization accepted proceduralism as its moral core, it signed its own death warrant.

Proceduralism is elegant. Scalable. Seemingly neutral. It ensures fairness in appearance and consistency in execution. But it is also dead inside. It does not tell people what to live for. It offers no conception of the good. No truth. No love. No beauty. Just fairness.

And that’s not enough.

The Ethical Castration of a Culture

A purely procedural morality neuters the soul. It teaches people not to seek greatness, but to stay within the lines. Not to pursue excellence, but to obey rules. Not to cultivate judgment, but to defer to form.

And when vitality disappears, so does the will to defend anything. Because you cannot fight for fairness. You cannot die for a well-processed form. You can only comply. And compliance does not produce civilization.

It merely maintains one. Until someone stronger walks in.

The Real Danger: Vitality Without Restraint

Proceduralism cannot compete with ideologies that still believe in something. It cannot face down those who are willing to destroy, to dominate, to transcend, or even to die.

Because proceduralism says:

"Don’t decide. Don’t discriminate. Just follow the structure."

And so, when someone shows up who says:

"I will decide. I will discriminate. I will win."

…the proceduralist folds. Not because he is weak, but because he has been morally disarmed by his own system.

What Rawls Gave Us

Rawls didn’t invent proceduralism, but he perfected its moral logic. He said: don’t pursue the good—pursue fairness. Design institutions that people would hypothetically agree to. Then run them. That’s justice.

But this is not justice. It is machine ethics.

It cannot inspire. It cannot lead. It cannot protect. It can only maintain.

Until something breaks.

And then it will have nothing to say.

Final Thought

Proceduralism works, for a time. It creates order. But it does so by draining a culture of the very forces that sustain it: belief, purpose, judgment, risk, moral vision.

Eventually, the society becomes so well-ordered that it forgets how to act. And when that day comes, those who still possess vitality will have their way with those who only possess process.

That is how civilizations die. Not in chaos.

But in perfect order, devoid of life.

Proceduralism is not merely inadequate. It is a form of civilizational suicide.