I'd say that's just the view from one side. If you overdo your automation without considering generalization and parameters, you lose flexiblity.

But when approached from the other side, you can also have generalization without automation: if you don't create a script for your five commands even if they turn out to be used over and over again.

For example, I'm imagining deployment of software releases:

  1. If you don't even have a defined way of deploying a release, you have neither generalization nor automation
  2. If your deployment is well defined, but requires several commands to be executed manually each time, you have generalization, but no automation
  3. If you can deploy a release with a single command or two, you have both generalization and automation
  4. If your release always deploys on a git push automatically, you lost generalization again

The last one is maybe a little odd, but in terms of generalization, I think of it as "being in control of which version is deployed without working against your own scripts".