I've just finished reading "Status Anxiety," by Alain de Botton. In it, he discusses how societies construct status and why (and how) members of those societies can come to feel anxious about their place in the group.
De Botton is one of my favorite authors, and I'm making my way through all his books. His specialty is a type of philosophy/social observation that uses examples from literature and art to illustrate his points, and he writes in "plain English" rather than in overblown and hard to understand academic terminology. He uses a great deal of humor to get his ideas across, and never dumbs down his message. I think he's great, and recommend him to everyone I know.
There were several instances in reading "Status Anxiety" where I thought of the Dollar Stretcher community -- one was when the author considers the meaning of wealth, and describes what Rousseau said were the two ways to make a man richer, "give him more money or curb his desires" (p. 42). I think that what many of us frugalistas are doing is curbing our desires -- rather than wanting to go out to dinner all the time or wanting to buy new designer clothes (or whatever society at large might try to encourage us to want) and feeling bad about not being able to satisfy those wants, we are instead refusing to want them in the first place, and in that way we are richer; we have fewer unsatisfied wants.
A second passage that I thought Dollar Stretchers would appreciate is this one: "One's ability to maintain confidence in a way of life at odds with the mainstream culture will be greatly dependent on the... value system of one's immediate environment, on the kinds of people one mixes with socially and on what one reads and listens to." (p. 277). As long as we have a chance to be in touch with others out there (through things like the Dollar Stretcher community) who think as we do, it strenghtens our ability to curb wants, stay free of debt, and have faith in our own values.
De Botton's basic idea (and the final sentence of the book) is that "there is more than one way of succeeding at life" (p. 293).
There have been film versions made of a couple of de Botton's books, including this one. You can watch snippets of the videos on his web site, I saw them on my local PBS station (with my transponder box and antenna, not on cable 
). Although I'm a big library user, I'm buying de Botton's complete works -- these are books that I refer back to a lot -- I was surprised that the hardcover copy of the 2004 version of "Status Anxiety" was remaindered at Barnes & Noble -- $5.95.... maybe escaping from this kind of anxiety isn't as popular with others as it is with us frugalisti.
