She starts with describing two essential spirits, one being conservative and steady, the other one being progressive and unpredictable. It becomes clear these spirits both inhabit everyone in some way or another and society reflects that as a whole as well.

On a personal level, it gets complicated really fast. People as I know them usually cannot be categorized as easily into one or the other. Some people appear as unconventional and free thinkers, but are set in their ways in many areas, and vice versa. And then it also depends very much on the situation, the atmosphere and so on. Someone who appears timid at first, sometimes just needs a nudge to open up and go bonkers.

So I feel like the notion that you can divide people into these categories is very reductionist.

What I find useful however is balancing the creative/progressive aspect (or spirit) with the conservative/steady one, and not just balancing but letting them guide oneself them deliberately, dependent on context.

John Cleese did a inspirational and funny talk[2] about this subject, that I found quite useful, because he suggests a practical framework to nurture the creative side deliberately.

Similarly, there is this talk[3] from Rich Hickey that describes the notion of giving oneself enough time to think deeply about problems. It relates to the above in the sense that he also acknowledges passive/subconscious mechanisms of our mind.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltairine_de_Cleyre [1] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/voltairine-de-cleyre... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb5oIIPO62g [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc