Being broadly well-read and rooted in a particular tradition can actually free up your mind to be more creative in a particular field or application.
You'll find yourself naturally cross-applying or daisy-chaining ideas together, that previously seemed unrelated, allowing you to create novel combinations.
This is the opposite use of reading, than looking toward a leading solution for a particular problem and allowing it to override all of your own solution ideas.
I think this is why women who subscribe to the concept of wifely submission often seem radical, reactionary, or even libertine in their ideas about other topics. Digging up the classics, rampant libertarianism, crunchy hippy gardening, etc.
They're rooted in this one, major aspect and they simply don't have to think about it, anymore. So, they are free to think about absolutely everything else and much hilarity ensues.
What do women think about, when they aren't jostling for power with their lover?
They're thinking about how to take over the world, of course.
Every "new" idea is actually just a novel combination of very many old ideas. By working through one or several intellectual traditions, one can find the possible branching points and tie-ins with other threads of thought. That's where new branches emerge.
