One of the important cultural changes to have occurred in the modern world is the now ubiquitousness of ideology. Politics has always been about power and control, and every conquering power has used ideological rationalizations for its exploitations and invasions. After monotheism, and particularly the Enlightenment, however, ideology has become a be-all-end-all of politics, and even those in power seem to actually fall sway to its deceptions. The proponents of fascism, socialism and liberal democracy actually believe that they don't really have lust for power, but actually want some higher celestial goal, be it ethnic purity, a world revolution or global democracy.
Whig history was the old idea that all cultural, economic and social changes were for the better and that we were on a never-ending climb upwards towards an earthy paradise. The term Whig history has sort-of been lost to time, but not because the idea has been, instead, it's so commonplace as to not need a name. It's simply assumed that if you're a Westerner you think of society as constantly "advancing" towards some higher aesthetic, and any bumps along the road are aberrations.
There's Fukuyama's Neoconservative manifesto and eschatology The End of History presents history as culminating in an inevitable world-wide liberal democracy. Socialists look forward to their world-wide revolution whose evidence they see everywhere. And Social Justice Progressives constantly remind us that opposition to any given cultural change is being "on the wrong side of history," where it's totally taken for granted that their version of Progress® is desirable and unpreventable.