One thing I find interesting about this time, and maybe HN specifically, is how the people focus on wealth and success (as a substitute for community and religion I think), and at the same time invest time in things like stoicism.

Part of stoicism is the practice of thinking about (your impending) death, often called memento mori[0], which directly contrasts any focus on ephemeral things such as wealth.

It's not surprising that this very contrast became a rather popular type of painting, called the Vanitas[1]. Two of my personal favorites:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_mori#/media/File:Still...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanitas#/media/File:1628_Claes...

Memento mori / Vanitas also escalated a bit in the 15th century, when we arrived at the Danse Macabre[2] (these days probably mainly known for that one famous Saint-Saëns composition). My favourite Danse Macabre painting was destroyed in a bombing, but there's still a high resolution photograph of it: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Totentan...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_mori [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanitas [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danse_Macabre