We also used to lose a lot more aircraft, and PNG and Africa toughen up pilots as a Darwinian process, where the stupid practices are weeded out as idiots remove themselves from the gene pool.
Advocating unstable approaches and reduced margins of safety as the way forward has no place in a modern airline. We do not live in the sixties and stable approaches and SOPs make more sense than the frankly silly advocacy of cowboy operations, just because we can.
Macho ideas and gung-ho attitudes are anachronistic to aviation safety, as someone has already said, if you want to behave like a lunatic, do it on your own dime in an aerobatic aircraft at the weekend, not in the cockpit of an airliner.