HC - I think very few mil pilots consider themselves to be steely-eyed gods of the sky but I can understand the frustration they feel moving to civil flying where there is limited training (compare a conversion to type between mil and civ) compared to that they enjoyed in the mil.
The mantra in the mil is to train hard and fight easy so you don't do the enemy's job for him - this clearly doesn't translate to civilian flying where the bottom line governs everything but when you have enjoyed the freedoms of mil flying, civilian stuff seems tame, over-regulated and under-resourced by comparison.
As for growing out of it - I think it is more like banging your head against a brick wall - it's nice when you stop as there is no way the system will change whilst beancounters control everything.
I'm sure the ratio of training to operational flying in mil vs civvy is massively different, after all we aren't at war that much these days. The mil can do this because it is all paid for out of my taxes and isn't expected to make a profit. However it is unhelpful to keep banging on about it because as I said earlier, mil and civvy are different kettles of fish, and always will be. Of course the down side of all that expensive mil training is that they become too expensive to do anything mundane like non-combat transport (think Falklands) and of course non-combat SAR, hence the recent total privatisation.
I'd liken it to the thought that there is no point in being the safest airline / helicopter operator if you go out of business.
What we have to do is look carefully at what training we do and why, so as to optimise the limited training time we have. Make it all count.
Anyway a suggestion, why don't you stop telling us how wonderful the mil was (since nearly everything you say is not transferable to civvy) and I'll stop banging on about the size of the balls and ego of the mil pilots?