I would love to use a term such as arc of moral progress. But what I'm discussing has nothing to do with morality nor does it associate itself with the traditional notions of progress.
From my decades of working with a contemporary group of businesses, I recognized that commerce, in the modern world, thrives on four qualities: meritocracy, diversity, openness and preference for markets.
I defended each of these many times in my blogs and know that they are the source of modernity, the source of our current long lifespan, extraordinary health and abundant lives.
What I haven't previously succeeded in doing is finding a word for this arc of human development that is built into the expansion of ‘commerce’.
In many ways my terminology (arc of human development ) has a similar nature to Darwinian evolution. There is no recent evolutionary step for a species that is superior to a similar step that occurred 10 million years ago. For both evolutionary steps the important attribute: is that they are ‘the best fit for that species in that environment’.
I don't have a term to describe the nature of Darwinian evolution. It might be called the ‘arc of life’. Making life possible on this planet.
To that extent I am comfortable in talking about the ‘arc of human development’ for the attributes of commerce. Our lifespan has expanded, our comfort zone is extraordinary, our health is an astounding miracle and the variety of meanings for our lives is incomparable.
I can only call that, commerce, the ‘arc of human development’.