Marx's Alienation
It is 7:30 AM on Monday morning and much of corporate America is beginning to get dressed for work. Suits are no longer necessary in the workplace, since many companies and organizations have shifted toward "business casual" attire. Everyday is now "casual day" and instead a sport jacket, as it has so cleverly been labeled, is appropriate. A tie is no longer essential and a suit is a bit too much for the business casual environment, but a sport jacket, sport coat, or blazer as it is commonly referred to, is quite befitting. Whether black, brown, blue, gray, plaid, or even green, the sport jacket has become an everyday accouterment, yet we hardly ever take notice to what it has come to symbolize and mean in both the daily life of corporate America and the realm of professional golf. On the first weekend in April of each year, at the claimed Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia, one man is deemed the champion of one of sports most prestigious tournaments, the Masters. The Masters is the culmination of the golfing season for professional golfers around the world, and there is perhaps no other sporting event that has as rich a tradition. The golfing season consists of many tournaments, yet none
" His article entitled "It ain't easy wearin' green" explains the prizes of many of sport's greatest championships. The Masters champion, alone, is entitled to wear the "green jacket" elsewhere, but just for the first year he holds the title. " Professional golfers around the world share in the belief that the green jacket is the single most sacred object in the golfing community. Whether it is the Masters' "green jacket", the championship rings of professional football, baseball, and basketball, an Olympic gold medal, the Tour de France yellow jersey, the heavyweight championship belt of boxing, or the Heisman Trophy award in college football, Caple claims that each memento conveys a different message and holds a different meaning. " He asserts that "a rock, a tree, a spring, a pebble, a piece of wood, a house, in a word, anything can be sacred" if collectively shared beliefs deem it so (Fields, 36). " It is an unwritten rule that members' "green jackets" should be worn only at the club. After the champion's year expires, his jacket is stored in a special cedar closet in the clubhouse and worn by him at the annual Champions Dinner. At the award presentation following the tournament, the previous year's champion helps the new winner into a jacket from the club's famed cedar closet. " One way to understand how and why professional golf's "green jacket" falls under the category of the sacred is by looking at Emile Durkheim's theory of the sacred and the profane, with regard to religion. Under this definition, golf is a religion and it, too, distinguishes between the sacred and the profane. Beliefs, according to Durkheim, are "representations that express the nature of sacred things and their relations with other sacred things or with profane things. It is nothing more than a shared religious belief, and at the root of every religion is simply a theory. He was concerned with what religion was in addition to the role it played in human society. The "green jacket" that is given to victor of the most prestigious professional golfing tournament, the Masters, is sacred in and of itself, yet, in order to understand its significance and the sacredness surrounding this object, one must look at the rites that surround the professional golfing community.
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Acceptance Essays
