It's true that success has some persuasion. But what is it? (I'd hate for it to sound like just another clonish variation of "A is A and that is all there is to say.") From what I gather, your thesis is supposed to have strengh enough to determine what part of A counts as success. Health of the body, without a doubt, will continue to rank high as a political end in years to come. Am I to presume that success likewise determines what are legimitate failures? And if we follow old-time Herodotus, our success in the Iraq is proof that the gods are with us.
Why, material success, of course. It's fairly likely that your material conditions are more conducive to physical life than the material conditions your great-grandparents labored under, just as their material conditions were rather more conducive to physical life than what their own great-grandparents had. Is that all there is to life? Of course not, but that's the part that is the rationalist's playground, in no small part because material conditions are readily measurable by those darned materialists. We may question whether materialism has a positive impact on one's spiritual life, but you'll have quite a task ahead of you if you intend to deny materialism's impact on the material world.