Third Generation
If you start from WWII and move forward, there's basically been 2 generations of professional aviators. The first generation relied on flying skills to attain the highest levels of safety that their equipment would allow. The second now relies on automation to achieve higher levels of safety. If even higher levels of safety are to be achieved in the future, a third generation of pilots has to combine the skills of the 1st and 2nd generations, and add analytical skills not too common in either of the prior generations.
Automation has clearly improved aviation safety and the statistics show this. It's remarkable that the 1st generation achieved what they did without most of the wizardry of today's aircraft. The failure of the 2nd generation is a general disregard of the basic flying skills and aerodynamic skills of the 1st generation, and a general lack of systems analyst skills. Both failures get the 2nd generation into trouble when the automation fails them, and holds back their potential safety achievements.
The 3rd generation needs to understand sound aerodynamic principles to augment a sound set of basic flying skills, to properly understand the aerodynamic strengths and weaknesses of his aircraft type. The 3rd generation not only needs to understand the automation systems, but also needs sounds systems analyst skills to understand the automation system's strengths and weaknesses. In other words the 3rd generation must know their aircraft type and its systems inside and out.
I love the post of Frenk Boreman, who had a successful career on a troubled type because he practiced "know your aircraft". I can't think of any profession that possesses a greater demand for rigorous honesty than aviation. You have to be honest about yourself and your skills, and you have to be honest about your airplane. That means keeping both your flying and systems skill up, and keeping up with the issues and problems with your aircraft type. You have to keep up with training issues, accident reports, recurring problems, ADs, tech bulletins, automation software issues, unusual failure modes, etc, etc.
The 3rd generation of professional aviators has to be good at everything to lead the industry to even higher levels of safety. The bean counters for the most part don't understand this, but there are ways of getting and maintaining the skills and knowledge you need.