July 5, 2023
Products and services are considered utilities when they are used solely in the aid of completing other tasks. Utilities in daily life include that of water, electricity and internet. From opening the tap, to plugging a cord into an outlet, to accessing a webpage, you expect the utility to just work. In fact, the last time you gave any thought to any of these utilities was probably when the utility didn’t work.
Even utilities with degraded experiences (from a leaky tap to a broken outlet, from the dishwasher making a funny sound to slow but usable internet), don’t often warrant a fix. Because it works well enough and that’s all we need it to do.
We adapt and find alternatives to keep on living without taking time off living to await a service professional, who would charge a few hundred dollars and disrupt a few precious hours from our lives to hopefully address the problem.
On the other hand, consider if your sink was 2x sturdier or if your power outlet could take 2x the power or if your wifi router had 2x the range. It probably wouldn’t matter. In fact, you’d probably think you could’ve gotten away with paying half the price for half the quality.
These utilities fall into the category of products and services that are only appreciated when they are absent. In other words, the baseline expectation of the utility is taken for granted.
Health is a utility. We don’t live to be healthy. Our healthiness allows us to live.
When’s the last time you thought about your health? Probably the last time it was broken - we call it being sick.
When’s the last time you went to the doctors (the relevant service professional)? Probably the last time you were sick enough such that you were unable to live your normal life. And in the case of a specialist subsequently charged a few hundred dollars.
What about the last time you had a headache, stomach ache or cramp? Did you go to the doctor? Probably not - you probably continued with the rest of your day, walking it off with perhaps a Panadol.
Humans are amazingly adaptive to our environment. Even in the face of disaster and tragedy, we find the dopamine and happiness to continue motivating the continuance of life. This can be observed in the Hedonic Treadmill.
We don’t care about health until it breaks. Like other utilities, we demand a baseline expectation of our health and for most people, we can take that for granted for most of our lives. And this is by design. Evolution builds in resilience to creatures so that the body can adapt well to changes in internal or external environments. Nature designs health to be a utility to enable the species to perpetuate without external intervention.
The reason for the health crises we experience today is because we have demanded less of the utility that is our health. We can eat junk food and not exercise every day because we can live sedentary lives at home and at the office that don’t demand performance out of our bodies.