No sir, PTH and I are not dangerous. We grew up in a system that required looking out the window VFR or IFR. I have had as many close calls under full IFR radar control as cowboying around the skies, as you would put it, with no radar control. We have 40,000 to 50,000 hrs total of navigating our airspace with no accidents, incidents or violations.
I like our system just the way it is. Unless automation turns us into robots some day so we can't manually intervene if things are going wrong we will be just fine over here. If we are turned into robots then ATC will determine how our flight turns out. If I had followed every ATC instruction to the letter I probably would not be able to make the above claim of no incidents or accidents.
We understand our system and know how to make it work. When a controller gives us an unusual altitude we question it because maybe he changed sectors and got it wrong. One day we were cleared out of a major airport to an arrival altitude, not departure. My FO confirmed we were cleared to the higher altitude. I said verify it or I am not going to climb above the normal departure altitude. He did and sure enough the controller normally did arrivals and gave us the wrong altitude. We were opposite direction to an arrival 1,000 ft above us. We might be too informal by your way of thinking but we are safe and know what is going on and are looking out the window.