Oakape, I think what you said about a lack of respect for the seriousness of the job is quite important and is tied in with what I said in an earlier post about the top levels of management not understanding what it takes to be a skilled operator. Most top level airline management can't understand it because they have never been in charge of an airliner when a non-normal is playing out in nasty weather, they can imagine all they like but until you have held that responsibility you'l not completely understand the job.
The other comments you made about pilots wanting a 'cool job where they don't pay attention' is off the mark in my opinion. I, like yourself, understand the importance of controlling the thrust levers while I'm flying and will also often override them when the auto throttle is a bit slow to react, but I don't think all pilots are aware of the importance of being that ' integrated' with the flying of the machine......so why is that? You say it's because they are lazy or lack airmanship but I think it is because they simply don't understand that they need to continually use the brain circuitry responsible for these motor actions lest the circuits lose their myelin wrapping and fail to function when needed. As an industry we need to actively teach/train the importance of maintaining the circuitry, it's pretty simple really, the 777 into the sea wall would never have occurred if you were the PF so we need to make the average airline pilots brain more similar to yours by bolstering the appropriate circuits. How do we do that? Adding an hour of raw data circuits and approaches at the start of each sim as non assessed training would all but fix the problem I reckon, if it was mandated then all airlines would have to comply and the cost would simply pass to the passenger.