Embracing the Grindset in Pikmin 4
I’m a strong proponent of Marie Kondo’s KonMari method. Though I’m not a religious person, Kondo’s spiritual approach to gratitude and the significance of the items we surround ourselves with (and, ultimately, purge) struck a chord with me; the physical space we occupy is at once a mirror of our state of mind and proof of the passage of time, a record of a person’s work and effort over a lifetime.
Pikmin may not be a game about tidying, but it is about careful organization and considerate use of the surrounding world. In its fourth iteration, the franchise finally assigns a word to describe the emergent emotional landscape its gameflow fosters—”dandori.” Dandori doesn’t have a literal translation into English (roughly, it refers to “arrangement” but in the context of a team setting), but is defined in Pikmin 4 as “[organizing] tasks strategically and working effectively to execute plans.” This tenet is the central philosophy behind the Rescue Corps, the group you work for in Pikmin 4, as well as the Leaflings, who cite dandori as a survival strategy for adapting to life on a foreign planet.
The dichotomy crafted here—corporate productivity babble versus self-sufficient survivalism—suggests a sort of collectivist mindset where, to live a truly harmonious life, we must rely on the skills and efforts of the people around us, and trust even the weakest of companions to pull their weight and work like a well-oiled machine. This is, obviously, a slippery mentality to be sold in our modern era. “Hustle culture” has permeated the public consciousness more and more over the last decade, and often, our self-worth is toxically wrapped up in our sense of productivity. Even spiritual practices and meditation have been appropriated by corporate America and organizations like the US military to pacify us out of our negative feelings when suffering under unfit working conditions.
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