How Can We Challenge the Status Quo with the Ground Truths We’ve Found?

The insights generated by The Consilience Project demonstrate processes and impediments to breaking down the barriers between Western and non-industrialized societies. Insights that apply to both music and technology include (1) the power of societal dynamics to blind Western practitioners to the value of non-industrialized knowledge; (2) the reticence toward embracing the unfamiliar as valuable; and (3) the discomfort with going off-script and improvising to find a newer and better solution or sound for the context in which it will be performed. A great need, and a deeply challenging one, is to question the status quo in Western education so that alternative knowledges may be respected and introduced, allowing both musicians and technology designers to diversify their understanding of quality.