That's one way to look at it. Another way is to ask yourself whether we could've been much farther ahead, as a civilization and a species, in terms of quality of life, human rights, technology and science, and so on, in 2013 given what we had accomplished already in say 1913, or even 13. I think the answer is a solid yes, we could've been 100 times ahead of where we are now. I wouldn't congratulate ourselves just because we have some professions where people don't suffer injuries at work, that's a pretty low bar we should've crossed ages ago. (I realize this is a tangent and I'm not really arguing against your main point...)