How can a person be both rational and creative?

Quora answer to "How can a person be both rational and creative?"

Thanks for the A2A. I think this only becomes a dichotomy when we allow analytical reasoning to interfere with creative impulses and vice versa, instead of encouraging harmonious synthesis - we might call this interference "fragmentation." As an example, when I write poetry or a song, I let the words and melody flow from my creative center - the intuitive, emotionally felt, aesthetically-oriented structures in my psyche - and effectively suspend my "editor and arranger," which will only interfere with that flow. Once I've completed my first draft, however, I will take a break (from a few hours to a day) and actively engage my "editor and arranger," which definitely involves more analytical structures. In both cases, it's the same mind being used, but the focus or emphasis of processing - and the structures that are called upon for primary support - are different. Not opposite, but different. And so this is more about shifting the focus of my consciousness between rational and creative, and then into a mode of combining synthesis, which I can do very fluidly now. However, I want to be clear that* this was not always the case*. When I was younger, I had trouble moderating these two modes - I felt more fragmented, as if the underlying structures could only compete rather than synthesize. Either I would remain in my creative space to the detriment of constructive rationality, or I would become hyperrational to the detriment of my creativity. So "being both" required self-discipline and honoring of different dimensions of being and combining them harmoniously, skills which took many years to mature, and the byproduct of which might be called "consilience."

My 2 cents.

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