Building the future for Ukraine: from intuitive prophecy to scientific synthesis

The article proposes the authors' attempt to critically analyze the approaches of intuitive and scientific forecasting and building the future widespread in the Ukrainian society. This is needed to facilitate combining efforts of their developers and the ability of Ukrainian people to objectively understand the forecasts. To do this, the authors applied the methodology of understanding the discrete attribute of any modernization and development, and approved an unconventional social science approach to forecasting the future, a «structuralist approach», in which we have no dynamic prehistory (at least for extrapolation, wave analysis, etc.). The authors also applied a set of scientific methods of cognition according to the following logic: from analyzing the intuitive approaches becoming increasingly popular in Ukraine and deductions based on them to formal-logical conclusions (induction) and synthesis in building the future as a specific set of procedures and methods for presenting results. The logic of presenting the material encompasses three interdependent statements: 1) what the subject and the object of forecasting are, and how to relate them now; 2) what the «development» and «development forecasting» are in forecasting and building the future, and how the subject can avoid common «pitfalls» of superficial ideas and false interpretations, and 3) where the person belongs in the built future. Consistently characterizing the most methodologically vulnerable, from a scientific point of view, aspects of forecasting, the authors maintain their position of a worthier place of a person and a citizen in different systems of state and non-state forecasting. This is about the forecasts made in terms of humanistic reasoning or common happiness. It is concluded that it is very dangerous to avoid forecasting the development and bold visions of the technological future. Political defeats and socioeconomic disasters have often happened and are still happening because people do not want, do not know or cannot imagine tomorrow in all its unpleasant complexity, or even more – they are afraid of this knowledge. This is why the scientific forecasts and warnings of practitioners and not only those of futurologists must be taken into account. Also, one of the key issues in shaping the vision of the future (in its social and philosophical sense) is building a subject-oriented and project-conscious world. This is difficult but necessary: the disuniting forces are often stronger than the uniting ones. The ability to achieve this intellectual consolidation could also become a test of the viability of Ukrainian society in 2020.