What all those comments and discussions gloss over is that the majority of all Star Trek adventures are probably only survivor stories.
No one would ever talk about the starship that went into Klingon territory to attempt some weird science experiment, tried to eject a warp core as a last Hail Mary save but instead met with three Klingon war ships and got blasted into oblivion never to be heard from again.
For every one amazing adventurous Star Trek story, there are probably 20 of star ship captains, entire ships or whole crews just either vapourized, blasted, frozen in space, exploded, imploded, teleported, phased, recombined, trapped in an alternate universe or just plain disappeared without explanation.
Alien species are probably in awe of us not because of how lucky we are but rather how persistent we are in the face of how unlucky we are. They would probably see us as gluttons for punishment.