A friend of mine told me a story today that really makes me wonder how we (humanity) can find a good path forward.

His friend, a 50ish woman from Russia, told him about phone call she had with her mother, who still lives in Russia. This discussion happened on March 6, just two days ago. As you might imagine, the conversation quickly turned to the current situation in Ukraine.

Apparently the conversation didn’t go well. Her mother lambasted this woman for blaming the Russians on the war in Ukraine. She said she didn’t understand why everyone was getting upset with Russia because all of the righting and bombing are being done by Ukrainians against Ukrainians – the Russians are there with the sole purpose of stopping the bloodshed. They are there for humanitarian reasons to help the Ukraine government and people – they are being heroes, facing great danger at great expense to protect the people of Ukraine.

My friend’s friend could find no way to enter into a dialogue or have a civil discussion on the topic – from her mother’s point of view it is obvious that we are being lied to, that the Russians are totally in go the side of good and helpful, while the NATO world (and the USA) are only attempting to destroy Ukraine, and Russia along with it. She believes that we are attacking Russia for our purposes, and that our media is in a large concerted propaganda campaign of disinformation.

Obviously, that isn’t what my friend’s friend believes. She believes the information we get is mostly accurate, or at least truthful. Her mother believes the same about the information she gets – and there is no obvious way to get around this impasse.

It seems like the new easy connectivity created by the Internet has created (or exacerbated) the problem of sorting out fake news from real news. Now that everyone can have a say we no longer have a trusted source of information – and anything goes. The problem with figuring out whether Russia is invading or assisting is a prime example – it is obvious to me, but if the story is a true one (which I believe it is), it is not obvious to everyone. This means that there is a different “truth” depending upon the source of information, and there is no clear external demarcation for “true” or “false”. In the case of the Ukrainian issue, I suppose one could travel there and see first hand what was happening, but even then all you can see is what is nearby – and that might be a tiny bubble in the midst of a totally different situation. We can’t be everywhere at all times, and even if we were we would still be stuck with not knowing how to know the entire situation. We HAVE to take the shortcut of believing (or trusting), but have no method for determining how to do that.

What a complicated, and frustrating, world we have come to live in. I suppose it has always been a little like that, but we didn’t know that we didn’t know. Now we do, and we can’t do anything about it.