Massless

"They could never catch up. There was always more work to do. There was always someone smarter, sharper, and richer who made them feel inconsequential in comparison. They had worked too hard to accept being inconsequential, so they worked even harder to even less effect. They grew accustomed to the constant chatter and whir of urban life, and they fell into a malaise when the world fell silent. But the world rarely felt silent, because they carried the whir home with them, like a headache, and it kept up its chatter throughout the night. It was the scream of the modern world, the background pitch of so many voices, and they couldn't sleep without it." -Bombadiers (1995), Po Bronson

From the article: "It should also be said, though, that the young elite are not entirely unlike the other young; they are the logical extreme of America's increasingly efficient and demanding sorting-out process, which uses a complex set of incentives and conditions to channel and shape and rank our children throughout their young lives."