Ugh. The winners write the history books, and their glorifiers write the epilogues. "The classical man's worst fear was inglorious death"? Really? Based on... what exactly? Who is this "classical man"? Define inglorious. Ugh, just terrible, terrible trite attempt at aphorisms. (Not you justinsingh, Taleb.)

I don't doubt that "modern humanity" in "the west" seems to deal badly with the process of dying. But Taleb... just no. At best he's a writer of highly variable quality.

Try reading Atul Gawande's Being Mortal.

I have to side with the modern man here. I don't think that there's anything that makes death "okay", or makes one death better than the other.

Even this thread is not exactly the discussion of death, just people wanting to avoid pain while they are alive. Once you're not - every damn death is the same.