I wonder if we're the cause of our own troubles indirectly on more than the "way we're precieved" side, when you look at flying these days it's seen as the safest way to get from point A to B, if you looked at this forty years ago, it was seen as adventurous and dangerous. The cockpits were complex, a million and a half knobs, switches and little round gauges to tell you what everything did, and people were "amazed" that the pilots knew what each one does. People look in today, and see six tv screens with funny colored things on them, and believe that all we do is take off and land (which for the most part is true) and go "eh, i played that on my computer."