Put this in bashrc or whatever flavour of shells's bashrc you use:

function cs () { cd "$@" && ls }

I didnt remember the function sintax of bash so I just copied it from SO.

Alternatively, you could use a TUI file manager. Once you get the navigation down you can manage things pretty quickly. Especially with ones that have options for dual directory layouts, like Midnight Commander or vifm.

It is called windows 2000 explorer and it's great for file operations :) In Linux i have yet to find a really good replacement ;(

that, or you have to make ABSOLUTELY SURE that you haven't accidentally pressed a button on your keyboard that has inevitably resulted in the total destruction of the directory contents

A window, you say!?

You probably want rangerfm or vifm. They use miller columns for to show you your surrounding context.

Doesn't let you rifle through things approvingly as you go. "Yes this is the correct directory because it has the three files I was looking at earlier--

You know what let's do a ls -al just to be super sure it's the right modification

I ain't reading allat