"PERSIAN" is an acronym for Political, Economic, Religious, Social, Intellectual, Artistic and Near. It is a framework for organizing your thinking about history.
• Politics is about power, who uses it to govern (make and enforce rules), how power is used, and the goals one hopes to accomplish by using power. Politics is about public decisions and how those decisions are reached. Public power is usually exercised through governments.
• Economics is about how people use whatever resources they have to produce and distribute goods and services. Economics is about jobs, production, money, and markets. Economics helps us decide how to effectively use scarce resources. Economics is about daily survival; you have to have food and shelter to survive, and that usually takes money.
• Religion is about how people view God, organize to worship and serve God, and how this affects public and private life, especially the moral framework that guides people and society.
• Social is about how people live with other people, what groups (classes, associations, formal or informal) they belong to, the rituals of daily life, the patterns of interaction in a given society.
• Intellectual is about the life of the mind, the way people think about and express their knowledge about the human condition, and seek meaning through the pursuit of knowledge.
• Artistic is about the creative drive in people and the ways they express that creativity through various means (i.e., painting, sculpture, architecture, literature, music, etc.).
• Near is about geography and the importance of the environment.
