From Paradise Lost to Paradise Conceptually Postponed: What Makes Scenarios of the Futures Being Staged
Abstract
In the article, the scenario-moulding is evaluated through the linguistic and conceptual accessibility
of the future and the moral challenges of doing and allowing harm to the future participants of the
practical discourses rooted in the present-centered scenarios. The viability of the scenarios is suggested
to be defined by the alienation from the present and past imaginative contexts, as well as by overcoming
the projections of humanity exclusiveness through inversible forecasting with the shift from human
power to vulnerability as the key issue in scenario-making. The eccentric approach to the future makes
it possible to review both intergenerational and intragenerational perspectives of the future through
the chronological distance and yet-inexistent subjects’ expectations and needs simulation. Taking to
account the impact of the past, present and future otherness implies the three-dimensional assessment
model involving metaphorical evaluation of the past-rooted patterns as paradise lost, illusions of the
accessible futures as paradise found, and refusal of the futurized present expectations for the yet unknown imaginative future contexts as paradise conceptually postponed. The approach can find its
practical application in tailoring and evaluating migration solutions and scenarios.