One thing about using automatics wisely is it allows you to 'manage' the operation. Good buzz word, but true. However, monitoring the automatics control the a/c is only possible if you know what it should be doing; i.e. what pitch & power the automatics should be applying. If you see what you want to see you can relax. Just leaving George and his family to fly and assume it is correct is highly dangerous, but sadly the new generation do just that because they've not been given the grounding to be able to monitor sensibly. Is George doing what i would do? Yes, then I'll give him a biscuit after the flight. No, then I'll kick his backside, takeover and only let him play again after a big sorry. Or I'll say a big Oops!, sorry myself and push a different button. Following the magenta line to 'who knows where' on a VNAV PTH to 'who knows where' is the name of the game for many. Needles are something for junkies. On non-GPS a/c they are vital. LNAV can not be used for approaches. These GPS jockies don't know what map-shift is, but it could still happen. We tune Nav Aids as back up, but the youngsters don't monitor them. LNAV/VNAV is God. I found it amazing that in the Cali B757 crash they tried to blame Jeppeson and Boeing. Incredible. It was a major human screw up, up front. How much raw data, SBY instrument flying is included in command courses. I still say the pax expect us to be their insurance policy. They expect us to handle it when the computers screw up and go fizz pop. The technocrats answer to human failings is to invent more backup systems and redundancy. In dong so they have indeed made many things safer, but the training dept's have a duty to teach awareness and not dependancy. One airline I was with had a training captain whose rote in the sim was "fly the FD, fly the FD". It was always a little fun to demonstrate how this could stall the a/c or fly it into the ground. He didn't change, but a cadets thankfully got the message.