Like television or the invention of writing, Zoom makes a promise that it cannot uphold. Those that wish to be monks will be monks wherever they are, but sacred spaces exist to provide a connective tissue for the rest of us. Some instructors have found that Zoom school has been highly effective for the monkish students, for whom any rock can be turned into educational bread. Some people have found it a way to maintain a semblance of connection during this diseased year. However, for many of us, a rock is nothing more than a rock that is either left alone or thrown through a stain-glass window. Zoom promises connection but denies the capacity for organic conversation; it allows us to see others’ eyes without seeing what those eyes see; it promises shared moments without shared spaces.

But when it came to the subject of letters, Theuth said, ‘But this study, King Thamus, will make the Egyptians wiser and improve their memory; what I have discovered is an elixir of memory and wisdom.’ Thamus replied, ‘[…] [Y]our invention will produce forgetfulness in the souls of those who have learned it, through lack of practice at using their memory, as through reliance on writing they are reminded from outside by alien marks, not from within, themselves by themselves. So you have discovered an elixir not of memory but of reminding. To your students you give an appearance of wisdom, not the reality of it; thanks to you, they will hear many things without being taught them… and they will be difficult to get along with because they have acquired the appearance of wisdom instead of wisdom itself.’
—Plato, Phaedrus, lines 274e5-275a5

Sacred spaces remind us that existence is more extensive than our daily lives. They point us toward new ways of knowing and existing. The wild desert monk may have no need for the sacred space. For him, the world’s seams tear and reveal the naked glory of God. But for most of us, the sacred space is necessary to orient ourselves toward hidden worlds. According to the famed media ecologist Neil Postman, a church building—or even a gymnasium converted into a church—is a sacred space because it is “designed as a place of ritual enactment.” A church building guides us by providing us symbols and rules for living in the sacred space. In a church, the congregants understand when to rise, when to kneel, when to pray, and when and how to worship. These rules help to create a place that is distinct from the profane. However, when technology claims to place the sacred in the profane, it deceives us. The place’s activities make the place either sacred or profane. Thus, an image of the Sistine Chapel on our phones does not create veneration in the same way as the actual chapel does.

The pandemic has separated us from our sacred spaces. If a sacred space contains ritual activity and behavior, even a baseball game can be called a sacred space. At least until recently, National Anthem demanded that we stood; the announcement of our team’s starting lineup demanded that we cheer; the opposing team’s lineup demanded that we jeer. We sang “Take me out to the ballgame” during the seventh inning stretch and celebrated, at least in Wisconsin, our favorite sausage as it races other sausages around the field. Sacred spaces connect us with others and a world richer and more profound than our daily lives through gossamer strands of tradition and communal activity. But the lockdowns snipped those threads, leaving us isolated and dangling from our egos, no longer a part of collective stories we tell ourselves about how we fit in the world.

Technology, however, promises a solution. Our phones connect us through Zoom and FaceTime, video messages, photos, text messages, and phone calls. As always, technology presents a false idol. It promises to improve upon tradition, but inevitably transforms and then destroys it. Technology does not intend this destruction, but the destruction is necessary, for a person does not pour new wine into old wineskins. We can see this destruction in education and how the idol of Zoom challenged the god of the classroom and changed education into an isolating, fractured, antisocial event.

The example of television can help explain how and why this happened. Postman, in Amusing Ourselves to Death, showed that when religious people attempted to join the sacred to the televised, entertainment won. We might say that Nietzsche declared God dead, but only television could kill him. Preachers attempted to conduct serious religious programming on television. However, television prevented religious services from being serious and transformed faith into entertainment, television’s preferred model. To engage the viewer, the television preacher had to play to the audience, work around commercial breaks, make heavy use of music to influence moods, and, above all, entertain. Dante placed treacherous sinners in the lowest level of hell. If it were divine, television would consign boring programming to those icy depths, for tedium is the greatest treachery against the medium.

Postman gave two reasons for this triumph of the medium over the message. First, television could not consecrate the physical space where the services were being held and, thus, could not compel behavior. Television enters our profane areas: our bedrooms, kitchens, and living rooms. These profane spaces, where we live and eat and breathe, tell us how to live, not television. I, for one, have no issue climbing onto the couch and falling asleep in front of a Netflix special. At church, I would at least have the dignity to pretend to be praying. Thus, the physical environment shapes our behavior. Television cannot shape our physical environment and must be entertaining enough to engage viewers in their living quarters. Church tells us when to rise, kneel, pray, and worship, and in that togetherness, the sacred is formed. In our living room, in front of the screen, we cannot have that experience because I cannot be compelled to do anything other than what is natural to the room except being persuaded through diversion.

Second, said Postman, the psychological connection to entertainment makes it difficult for television to teach and guide. The best television amuses, and the worst television does not. Even educational television is more entertainment than education. The magic of the Magic School Bus is not what they learn, but the characters, conflicts, and dangers they face along the way. The awareness that more entertainment is a mere channel change (or, in these days, app change) away forces religious figures to entertain rather than to inform and persuade. After all, if Ms. Frizzle spent 24 minutes lecturing instead of taking students on a daring trip into the human bowels, the magic would be gone.

Thus, television, as a medium, promises to educate but actually entertains. In the same way, it creates entertainment that pretends to be serious religion. This does not mean that serious education or serious religion cannot be done on television, just that the medium resists the language of seriousness and seriousness will never be the dominant language. Similarly, the promise of Zoom or any videoconferencing software is that of connection, but the actual language is of isolation and distraction.

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