Do you think, in Aviation, we're going through a metamorphosis today similar to what occurred when steam gave way to sail with sea transport?
I don't think there'd be one person reading this thread who wouldn't be willing to bet a year's salary that back then, old captains brought up on sail sat around in harbour bars decrying the lack of skills/knowledge etc of the new breed of 'stink boat' sailor.
It's a fact. Things change, and sometimes irrevocvably.
However, for Aviation, I don't think the sail to steam analogy holds too much water
(sorry if some see that as a dreadful pun to some). Where a 'new breed' ship's officer on one of them thar new-fangled coal burners would have lost the ability and the knowledge to rig a jury sail (that's if the new-fangled steamer had a mast that would take one!), at worst, he might have -
eventually - drifted onto a shoal if he lost his engines, and in many cases, he should have had quite some time to summon some help before actually hitting those rocks.
In Aviation, it really is different. We're not steaming at 12 knots, we're doing 480 knots, or at best, maybe 120K, and those 'rocks' (or at 480 knots, something equally as hard), are ALWAYS just minutes, sometime only seconds, away.
I've seen quite a few posts here from people decrying the (us!) Old Farts and our predictions of gloom and doom with the loss - and lack of maintenance - of hand flying skills. At the risk of sounding like one of those old sailing captains in a seaside tavern 150 years ago, I think I'll close by repeating
PJ2's (I think) very wise comment from his post above, with my own emphasis added.
Through no fault of their own, we are seeing the beginnings of a generation raised on "FS in a comfortable if not naive environment", who don't know what they don't know about aviation.
Edited to add: "...and thanks to patently silly airline SOPs demanding the use of the highest level of automation available at all times on the line, this new generation will never be given the chance to develop vital skills and to learn that - maybe on just one awful day in their otherwise uneventful careers - those skills really can be the difference between life or death."