About a decade ago I began an earnest study of Chinese dynastic history. It was so vast a topic that at best I could only undertake a survey. I remember enough to be able to talk generally about trends and significant events, but most of the Emperors and their achievements are forgotten.

Not so the first Emperor Qin Shi Huang, who unified (by force) the Chinese heartland into a state that is recognisable today. He was ruthless and ambitious and somewhat paranoid, burning books and burying scholars alive. He was also keen on living forever and combed the Empire for potions that would give him a longer, perhaps eternal life. He even dispatched an expedition in search of the fabled Penglai Mountain. It never returned, perhaps fearing the wrath that failure would incur. As an ironic post-script to this, Qin Shi Huang died at age 49, possibly from mercury poisoning ingested in elixirs created by court alchemists.

The desire for eternal life is embedded in numerous myths in the Greek world and also stories in the modern, notably Wilde's Dorian Gray. We live in an age in which youth is lionised and growing old to be avoided assiduously by all manner of techniques. I think that the decline of faith has lead to an increasing fear of death and an obsession with putting off the evil moment.

I don't blame anyone for this, for if you don't believe in an afterlife, then you are going to cling to every breath. But things can be taken too far. I read today about a tech millionaire (what a surprise!) who is employing a huge range of lifestyle and medicinal interventions (such as blood transfusions from his son and monthly colonoscopies) in an attempt to hold off the inevitable. Apart from the self-importance and narcissism that are key aspects of this audacious folly, there is a cold, hard failure to live life as it is and not as a fairy-tale might have it be.

The tech millionaire has the money and doubtless some time on his side. But we are dust ultimately, and to that we shall return.