Unifying Awareness

Situational awareness is almost a Marine Corps training tenet. Attention to detail is probably the first situational awareness concept that a Marine learns. From that point on each Marine gains tool that permits him or her to execute multiple tasks simultaneously or linearly depending on the specialty training and core competencies taught and learned in the Marine Corps. Some of these interrelated tools used to enhance situation awareness are the skills, concepts, and competencies listed below.

• Estimating the situation - METT-T and METT-TSL
•  Utilizing the OODA Loop 
• Development of paragraph one, situation, of the five paragraph order
• Cognitive skills development and application 
• Effective communications skills using any media and format 
• Combining experience, training, and environmental factors

The combination of these creates a mental awareness that allows the Marine to make better decisions, which is the goal of situational awareness.

OODA Loop Goal

The goal of the OODA Loop is to develop decision-making superiority. Decision-making superiority occurs when leaders and Marines can make decisions faster and more effectively than the opposition. The ability to make simultaneous decisions by exercising the human mind correlates to enhanced performance in every aspect of life and the operating environment.

Elements of Tactical Decision Making - Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is the ability to combine observations, experiences, and theoretical solutions into one practical solution. Depending on the depth and breadth of the problem, the solution may have to be multilayered, meaning analyzing and subdividing it into multiple smaller problems which can be solved more simply and easily, and by subordinates, either independently, simultaneously, or in linear fashion to achieve the desired output.

The Boyd Cycle

The Marine Corps' heritage binds the past and future together via commitment to warfighting excellence in the present. A keystone of Marine Corps training and education is the commitment to develop leaders that can out think the opposition.

Colonel John Boyd, USAF (Retired) served as a distinguished fighter pilot in Korea and Southeast Asia. Boyd's theory and experience was a great contribution to the military. Boyd realized that power and speed were not the quantifying factors to air superiority, but merely a conveyance coupled with the most powerful weapon, the human mind.

Warfighting Decision Forces

In warfighting, the Marine making decisions should understand the operational perspective of the Marine Corps and its commanders, and the relationship between doctrine and decision making, which is not normally discussed. The section addresses the interrelationship between warfighting doctrine and its influence on decision making.

Lack of Moral Courage

Decision making requires leaders to make tough decisions in the face of uncertainty and to accept full responsibility for those decisions. Anything less undermines authority and discipline.

Logos

John 1:1 presents Christ by means of the term logos. The Greek term means, "word," "statement," "message," "declaration," or "the act of speech." In John 1 logos has a specialized meaning; it is described as hupostasis (Heb. 1:3): a distinct, personal existence of an actual, real being. John 1:1 shows that "the Word was with God, and the Word was God" are both true at the same time. This means that there has never been a time when the Logos did not exist with the Father.

John then shows that the Word has agency in creation. Genesis 1:1 teaches us that God created the world. John 1:3 lets us know specifically that the Lord Jesus Christ in His preincarnate state actually did the work of creation, carrying out the will and purpose of the Father.

We find also that the Word is where life is found. John 1:4 says, "In him was life, and that life was the light of men." Because Jesus is the location of life, He is the only place where it may obtained. A quality of life is being described here, eternal life. This kind of life is available from God with His life-giving power through the Living Word. We have eternal life only as Christ's life is in us.

The world's misunderstanding of the Logos is hinted at in John 1:5, "The light shines in the darkness, but darkness has not understood it." The passage continues by saying that John the Baptist came as witness to that Light. "The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though was made through him, the world did not recognize him" (John 1:9-10). We want to focus our attention on this point. The Creator of the world, the Second Person of the Trinity, God the Son, was here in the world, but the world did not recognize Him. The next verse gets more specific. "He came to that which was his own [His own place, this earth He had created], but his own [His own people, Israel] did not receive him" (John 1:11).

The heirs of the covenant, the physical descendants of Abraham, did not receive Him. Here we see a very prominent theme that runs through the Gospel of John: the rejection of Jesus. When Jesus preacher, some Jews mocked. When Jesus said, "Your Father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad," the Jews in unbelief said, "You are not yet fifty years old... and you have seen Abraham!" Then Jesus declared, "Before Abraham was born, I am!" (John 8:56-58). The present tense of the verb "I am" (Gk. eimi) indicates linear being. Before Abraham was, the Son is.

Although many rejected the message, some were born of God. In John 1:12 we read, "Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God." In other words, Jesus was redefining the whole reality of becoming a child of God. Up to that time, one had to be born into or join the specific, called, covenant people, Israel, to have that opportunity. But John emphasizes here that the spiritual message, the powerful gospel, had come and people had received Jesus, the Logos. Receiving Him meant receiving the right or the authority to become children of God. Some of those who received Him were Jews and some were Gentiles. Jesus broke down the dividing wall and opened up salvation to all who would come and receive Him by faith (John 1:13).

The essential truth about the Logos who is being described here is in John 1:14. "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us." Here we see that the term logos is being pressed into the service of describing Jesus Christ, but that the reality of His person is more than the secular meaning of the concept is able to bear. To the ancient philosophic Greeks, a fleshly logos would be an impossibility. However, to those who will believe in the Son of God, a fleshly logos is the key to understanding the Incarnation. In fact, this is exactly what the Incarnation means: The preexisting Logos took on human flesh and walked among us.