Essay
Kai-jie Tang 1,2,*
1Department of Education and Future Design, Doctoral Program in Foresight for Educational Leadership and Technology Management, Tamkang University, Taipei, Taiwan
2Science & Technology Policy Research and Information Center, National Applied Research Laboratories, Taipei, Taiwan
Abstract
This paper explores the applicability of the concept of myth within Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) in the Chinese context. Due to differences in translation and cultural context, the concept of myth in CLA is challenging to understand and apply in the Chinese-speaking world. Through a review of theoretical concepts, this paper proposes distinguishing and translating the concept of myth into “Héxīn Xìnniàn (core belief)” and “Yīngxióng Shénhuà (heroic myth)” to better align with the Chinese cultural context.
Keywords
Causal Layered Analysis, Myth, Heroic Myth, Core Belief
Introduction
Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) is a poststructuralist critical approach to futures studies. Rather than predicting the future, it aims to challenge existing power structures, expand possibilities for alternative futures, and create a more flexible understanding of reality. This method consists of four levels: the litany, social causes, discourse/worldview and myth/metaphor (Inayatullah, 1998, 2004).
In CLA, the myth/metaphor layer is widely regarded as the most valuable and enlightening. However, as a learner of futures studies in the Chinese-speaking world, I often find it difficult and challenging to identify the myths/metaphors in the minds of research subjects during the research process. On one hand, most CLA-related literature tends to produce outputs that resemble metaphors rather than myths in the myth/metaphor layer. For instance, Wahab (2024) conducted a bibliometric analysis of 292 academic papers on CLA published between 2000 and 2022. In his keyword analysis, he found that “metaphor” was among the top five most frequently appearing keywords, whereas “myth” did not appear in the list of commonly found keywords (those appearing more than five times). Based on my search, only two academic papers related to CLA—by MacGill (2015) and Cowart (2022)—include “myth” as a keyword. Additionally, journals related to futures studies frequently feature special issues and articles that focus primarily on metaphors—such as those by Bin Larif (2015) and Fische & Marquardt (2022)—while very few concentrate specifically on myths. Moreover, some authors have labeled the fourth layer in their CLA analysis directly as the “Metaphor layer,” without explicitly mentioning myths (e.g., Hoffman, 2022; Sweeney, 2022). On the other hand, the understanding and imagination of the term “myth” in the Chinese-speaking world seem to differ slightly from those in Western cultures. Consequently, I began to ponder whether we need to discuss myths in CLA at all. It wasn’t until a recent event in central Taiwan that I re-evaluated the value of myths and considered how to make the concept of myths more accessible to people in the Chinese-speaking world.
In May 2024, an incident occurred on the Taichung Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) where a perpetrator randomly attacked passengers with a knife. During the incident, a long-haired man bravely intervened and disarmed the attacker, thereby reducing potential casualties. According to news reports, the long-haired man stated that his courage to confront the attacker came from the heroic model in the recent popular Japanese anime Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End. The anime depicts the journey of the long-lived elven mage Frieren, who, decades after defeating the Demon King and restoring harmony to the world, reflects on her deceased comrade, the human hero Himmel. In moments of decision, Frieren recalls the always helpful and fearless Himmel as her role model, often saying: “If it were the hero Himmel, he would certainly do the same.” In an interview, the long-haired man involved in the Taichung MRT incident mentioned that he too felt fear during the event, but Frieren’s words came to mind, which inspired him to emulate hero Himmel’s bravery.
From CLA perspective, the anime Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End facilitated the reconstruction of a personal myth for the long-haired individual, shaping his framework of meaning and decision-making. Given its popularity across Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, this anime exhibits potential as a contemporary collective myth. My personal encounter with the series and a related incident on the Taichung MRT underscored the powerful influence of myth. This prompts further exploration of myth’s role within Chinese-speaking futures studies.
Translation Discrepancy
Some futurists have noted that certain key concepts in the field of futures studies may acquire different meanings or even become difficult to translate when placed in the context of non-Western cultures and languages (Bae, 2014; Dator, 2017; Chen & Hoffman, 2017). I believe the concept of myth is a similar example. In the Chinese context, the term “myth” can be translated in two ways: one is “Shénhuà (神話),” which literally means “stories about gods,” and the other is “Mísī (迷思),” which literally means “confused thoughts” or “misguided thoughts.” Do these literal meanings facilitate our understanding of the concept of myth in CLA? To explore this, we can begin by examining the definition of myth as provided by Professor Inayatullah, the creator of this method.
Inayatullah’s concept of myth is rooted in the work of Johan Galtung, William Irvin Thompson, and indirectly, Carl G. Jung (via Joseph Campbell). Influenced by Galtung’s “Civilization, Trauma, and Myth Syndrome” and Thompson’s mytho-poetics, Inayatullah defines myth as “unconscious assumptions of how the world is or should be.” (Inayatullah, 2004; Ramos, 2003). Importantly, he distinguishes this from the common misconception of myth as a false narrative, emphasizing its role in providing collective meaning (Milojević & Inayatullah, 2015).
Compared to these definitions, we can see that in the Chinese context, whether myth is translated as “Shénhuà” or “Mísī,” the literal meanings in Chinese differ from Inayatullah’s definition of myth. In fact, translating myth as “Mísī” aligns more closely with the meaning of myth that Inayatullah does not endorse.
Furthermore, by examining practical cases, we might observe that this conceptual discrepancy is even more pronounced. From Inayatullah’s discussions of practical cases involving CLA, I found three articles (Inayatullah, 2004, 2008, 2015) that collect multiple instances where he explicitly identifies certain statements as myths, as organized in Table 1.
Table 1: Examples of Myths Listed by Inayatullah
| Source | Issue | Myth |
| Inayatullah (2004) | Bangkok traffic futures | West is Best, Bigger is Better |
| Unpacking population futures — too many people | Duty of care versus Fear of the ‘other’ and teeming masses | |
| Unpacking population futures — issues of women’s power | A sustainable partnership society | |
| Unpacking population futures — unequal resource sharing | Justice for all, not just the resource-rich | |
| Pharmaceutical industry futures | Interest groups each with competing myths — from drugs for all, to need for profits, to tailored drugs | |
| Smart State | Competing stories: Children are our future; Smartness is wisdom; Smartness is IQ enhancement; Yet another ploy. | |
| Multicultural futures | 1. Fear of other tribes
2. Family of “Man” |
|
| Communication technology — regulatory futures | Hackers see the Net as virgin territory — a new frontier; regulators as potential crime zone; academics portray a new Wild West. | |
| Inayatullah (2008) | Medical mistakes | Doctor knows best |
| Green tea and cancer | 1. Green tea as cancer cure
2. Green tea as part of slow time |
|
| Inayatullah (2015) | The mortgage crisis story | Problem: I shop therefore I am
Solutions: Live within one’s means |
| The global banking crisis story | Problem: Loss of trust
Solutions: Restore faith and trust in the system—credo |
|
| The creative destruction story | Problem: Natural cycle of events
Solutions: Time for strong medicine, invisible hand, no pain, no gain |
|
| The geopolitical shift story | Problem: Day of Reckoning for the West
Solutions: Peaceful rise of Asia |
|
| The God’s plan story | Problem: We have sinned
Solutions: God will save the day, but first destruction |
|
| The inner transformation story | Problem: I am the victim
Solutions: Awakening of the inner spirit |
|
| The symptoms of capitalism story | Problem: It’s not fair
Solutions: Fair go for all |
|
| The eco-spiritual story | Problem: The endless rise, growth forever
Solutions: The grand transition to prama |
Sources: Inayatullah, 2004, 2008, 2015
As shown in Table 1, the myths identified by Inayatullah are not “stories about gods” (i.e., Shénhuà), but primarily involve people’s explanations and assumptions about phenomena or social operations.
To assess the alignment of Table 1’s content with the concept of Shénhuà, I conducted an informal survey among five postgraduate-educated Taiwanese friends. The participants were asked to determine whether the content presented in Table 1 could be categorized as Shénhuà. Four of the five individuals were unable to identify any connection between the table’s data and the Shénhuà construct. In contrast, the remaining participant, who might have pursued academic studies in Western countries, acknowledged the content as Shénhuà but clarified that her interpretation was grounded in a Western understanding of myth rather than a specifically Chinese cultural framework.
After further discussion, most of my friends believed that the term “Xìnniàn (信念),” which literally means “the ideas people believe in” and is commonly translated as “belief” in English, was more suitable for describing the content in Table 1.
The Concept of Myth
The direct translation of “myth” into Chinese as Shénhuà or Mísī obscures the nuanced concept employed in CLA. This linguistic discrepancy poses challenges for conducting effective CLA workshops in Chinese-speaking contexts compared to English-speaking environments. Despite the prevalent emphasis on metaphors in many futures workshops, the concept of myth remains a critical yet often overlooked component of CLA. While metaphors offer valuable insights, myths provide a more profound and comprehensive framework for understanding and challenging dominant narratives. Myths and metaphors together shape our perception of reality, and to imagine and construct new alternatives, it is necessary to first uncover and deconstruct the existing ones.
Additionally, exploring myths and metaphors also aims to facilitate changes in frameworks of meaning to enhance agency, thereby ensuring that “culture does not eat strategy for breakfast” (Milojević & Inayatullah, 2015; Inayatullah, 2022a). Consequently, Inayatullah (2004, 2022a, 2022b) also argues that strategies need to be linked to myths/metaphors, and policies or strategies that lack myths/metaphors roots or are even contradictory to them will be ineffective. Here, we can see that Inayatullah places great emphasis on the guiding function of myths/metaphors, and that myths/metaphors are deeply embedded in people’s minds, guiding their actions and decisions unconsciously. Therefore, to critique and dismantle power relations, we must first explore the existing myths/metaphors people hold.
However, as Cowart (2022) describes, while metaphors embody cultural coherence, myths, as expressions of archetypes, reflect deeper cultural meanings. From this perspective, I believe that myths are more likely to play a guiding role compared to metaphors. For example, as shown in Table 1, the myths listed by Inayatullah indeed have significant guiding implications. In addition, Milojević (2002) also used the concept of myth in CLA to analyze hegemonic narratives about the future of education, revealing that these narratives subtly incorporate myths such as “Western world at the top of development ladder,” “Darwinian paradigm/evolution and survival of the fittest,” or “discovered but yet not fully colonized space.” Milojević’s analysis demonstrates that these hegemonic narratives are deeply rooted in Western linear historical perspectives and patriarchal biases. The insights gained from such myth analysis in CLA are highly valuable. Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, the heroic myth held by the main character in the Taichung MRT incident even prompted him to stand up against violence in real life.
In contrast, many examples of metaphors merely serve as rhetorical transformations of personal predicaments without providing guidance. For instance, Inayatullah (2022a) mentions metaphor of Chinese education as “the dragon bounded by the Great Wall,” the metaphor of international police departments as “a toothless tiger,” and the metaphors used by an international bank economist and a detective as “golden handcuffs” and “an iPhone in a room full of Nokias,” respectively. Such metaphors may not genuinely belong to the category of deep guiding metaphors, meaning that individuals do not act or make decisions based on these metaphors, nor do these metaphors shape their frameworks of meaning.
Reframing Myth for Chinese Contexts
So, how can CLA practitioners and participants in the Chinese-speaking world overcome linguistic and cultural barriers to effectively utilize myths in CLA? I believe that using translatable concepts within the Chinese context to more clearly and precisely categorize and describe the characteristics of myth could be a possible solution. Considering Inayatullah’s definition of myth, we can further decompose the concept of myth in the Chinese-speaking world into two types: “core belief” and “heroic myth.”
As confirmed by my Taiwanese friends the myths listed in Table 1 could be understood as “Xìnniàn (信念; belief).” Inspired by this, I propose using “Héxīn Xìnniàn (核心信念; core belief)” as a type of myth. It can be defined as deeply rooted understandings people hold (often unconsciously) about how society operates, regardless of whether this understanding is supported by empirical evidence.
Another type of myth is the “Yīngxióng Shénhuà (英雄神話; heroic myth).” The literal meaning of the term Shénhuà in Chinese is “stories about gods,” making heroic myth, as a type of Shénhuà, understandable and acceptable in the Chinese-speaking world. Since Inayatullah’s concept of myth also draws on Jungian psychology, the concept of Yīngxióng Shénhuà readily brings to mind the works of mythologist Joseph Campbell and psychologist Carol S. Pearson, both significantly influenced by Jung and widely appreciated in the Chinese-speaking world.
Campbell (1973) analyzed myths from around the world and identified a general narrative structure known as the hero’s journey. Pearson (2015, 2021) emphasized various archetypes within heroic myths, such as the Warrior and the Magician. She argued that people often unconsciously follow a certain heroic archetype narrative, which may even be externally imposed. Pearson advocates that individuals should recognize the current heroic archetype narrative they are following to find a growth path suited to them. These heroic myths provide people with internal psychological motivation and behavioral exemplars.
It is particularly important to note that as users of the CLA method in non-Western contexts, we should explore diverse heroic myths that fit our own cultures, rather than strictly adhering to Campbell’s hero’s journey structure or Pearson’s six or twelve heroic archetypes. Furthermore, as illustrated by the Taichung MRT incident mentioned at the beginning of this article, popular media can also be a source of heroic myth narratives.
Heroic myths can be adopted not only at the individual level but also at organizational, societal, and even national levels. Historically, numerous heroic organizations and groups have served as collective exemplars. For example, at the organizational level, the institutions and practices of leading companies like Google have been emulated by many other companies for a long time. At the national level, we see contemporary China frequently invoking the imagery of unified prosperous eras such as the Han and Tang dynasties. Similarly, pro-independence individuals in Taiwan often recount the stories of small nations like Singapore and Israel that have achieved independence and statehood.
Conclusion
As an important method in futures studies, CLA has gained widespread application in recent years. However, compared to the concept of metaphor, which has received considerable attention, the concept of myth seems to be increasingly overlooked. In light of this observation, this essay contributes to the discussion of the CLA method in several ways. First, it highlights that although the concept of myth has become less prominent in CLA-related literature and practice, it still holds significant value and warrants further exploration by researchers. Second, the essay argues that in the Chinese context, the neglect of the myth concept may stem from misunderstandings arising from cultural and linguistic differences. Finally, it proposes alternative concepts, such as “Héxīn Xìnniàn” and “Yīngxióng Shénhuà,” that may be more easily understood and applied within the Chinese-speaking world.
By dividing the concept of myth in CLA into “Héxīn Xìnniàn” and “Yīngxióng Shénhuà,” it may become easier for CLA practitioners in the Chinese-speaking world to guide participants into the myth/metaphor layer during interviews and workshops. Additionally, using these two concepts can help CLA practitioners align more closely with the methodology’s principles, as both Héxīn Xìnniàn and Yīngxióng Shénhuà shape people’s cognitive frameworks and provide psychological motivation for action. By uncovering the Héxīn Xìnniàn and Yīngxióng Shénhuà that individuals unconsciously follow, they can understand and deconstruct their assumptions and limitations when thinking about the future or the present, thereby imagining and reconstructing new alternative myths.
Lastly, based on the discussion in this paper, we can further consider the distinction between concepts as tools for academic analysis and as facilitation tools in workshops. Concepts in futures research methods, when used as academic tools, should be precisely defined and capable of addressing the complexity of phenomena. However, when applied as facilitation tools in workshops, the priority should be on ease of understanding, simplicity, communicability, and inspiration. The concept of myth in CLA, while widely accepted in academic writing, may be challenging to apply in practical workshop settings, as it often needs to be communicated to non-specific participants. It can easily be misunderstood or difficult to grasp across different cultures or communities, potentially requiring further adaptation based on the specific context. This issue is not unique to CLA. For instance, Epp et al. (2022) found that renaming the Futures Wheel method to “Future Ripples” when used with participants with human-computer interaction design backgrounds led to a better facilitative effect. Thus, translating existing futures methods across cultural and community contexts is a research direction worth exploring, as it holds potential for enhancing the practical effectiveness of futures tools.
Acknowledgements
I would like to sincerely thank Professor Kuo-Hua Chen and Professor Nur Anisah Abdullah of Tamkang University for their guidance and encouragement. Without their support, this paper would not have been completed. The author takes full responsibility for any remaining errors.
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