What Now? - After the election, a deeper call to integrity

By Michael Lee

In the days since the election, I’ve been reflecting on what this moment asks of us—not only as citizens, but as people committed to living with greater awareness and integrity.

Inspired by a talk by Gil Fronsdal, I reflected before the election on the integrity we hope to see in our elected leaders, and the responsibility to practice it ourselves. That responsibility did not end when the polls closed. In some ways, it becomes even more demanding then.

Plenty of analysis will focus on what the results mean. Much of it will be useful. People vote for many reasons: the cost of living, their children's future, frustration, loyalty, fear, hope. We should be careful about claiming that millions of people were all saying the same thing.

Still, I find myself wondering whether something deeper might also be stirring.

Perhaps, alongside changes in political allegiance, there is a growing desire for a different quality of leadership. Less domination. More participation. Less performance. More honesty. A recognition that the purpose of public office is to serve the people whose lives are affected by its decisions.

Could this be part of a shift in consciousness?

I offer that as a question. An election cannot tell us how awake we are. The conduct that follows it may tell us considerably more.

A turning we have to participate in

The phrase “the Great Turning” offers a useful way to consider this possibility. David Korten traces its use to Craig Schindler and Gary Lapid, whose work in the 1980s connected personal peace with the transformation of conflict. Joanna Macy subsequently expanded and popularized it, describing a movement toward a society capable of sustaining life.

Macy identified three connected dimensions: protecting life from further harm, creating new social and economic arrangements, and changing how we understand our relationship with one another and the Earth. Her vision reaches far beyond any election. It asks us to recognize that our lives are interdependent, and to organize our behavior accordingly.

That last part matters. A change in consciousness has consequences. It changes how we use power, what we reward, whose suffering we notice, and what we are willing to do about it.

If we invoke the Great Turning, we also have to ask where we are helping it take shape.
 

What would we look for?

One place I would look is our willingness to question authority, including authority on our own side.

I am especially interested in whether younger people will insist on having a meaningful voice in decisions that shape their future. Will they challenge the assumption that someone older, richer, louder, or more powerful automatically knows what is best for them? Will they also challenge cruelty and conformity among their peers?

I would hesitate to declare an entire generation more conscious than another. Every generation has its blind spots. But the willingness to question our own group, and to listen across generations, seems a promising place to begin.

Another sign would be leadership that keeps returning attention to the people it serves. In his victory speech, Michigan Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed thanked the people who built his campaign and emphasized that the work ahead was bigger than one senator. That emphasis on shared participation caught my attention. It is a standard worth applying to anyone who seeks public trust, including him.

I also took encouragement from a point Rahm Emanuel made in his post-election NPR interview. He urged Democrats to pursue lobbying and ethics reform rather than another impeachment effort, while explicitly supporting investigations. The distinction was that hearings should lead to changes in how government works.

I would not call a political strategy an expression of spiritual wisdom simply because I find something useful in it. But it raises a spiritual question: what is the intention behind the action? Are we trying to prevent further harm and improve people's lives? How much of our energy is going into making an opponent suffer?

Accountability remains essential. Facts must be established, wrongdoing investigated, and appropriate consequences pursued. We can do that firmly while examining the satisfaction we may take in another person's humiliation.

Integrity after the vote

The Buddhist Eightfold Path gives us a way to examine these questions. Its teachings on wise intention, wise speech, wise action, and wise mindfulness can inform our participation in public life. This is an application of those teachings, rather than a claim that Buddhism prescribes a particular political program.

Wise intention invites me to examine what is driving me. Concern? Fear? The wish to protect? The desire to win or punish? Often there is more than one answer. Integrity begins with being willing to see that mixture.

Wise speech asks something equally demanding. Before I repeat a claim, have I checked it? Can I criticize a policy clearly without degrading the person who supports it? Can I speak firmly when silence would allow harm?

Wise action brings the inquiry into the world. Who benefits from what I am doing? Who bears the cost? What happens after the speech, the celebration, or the social media post?

And mindfulness helps me notice my own participation: the tightening in my body when I hear an opposing view, the rush of pleasure at a cutting remark, the impulse to share something before I know whether it is true. In that moment of noticing, another response becomes possible.

These practices are available to us, whatever our political affiliation. They also require us to hold those we supported to the standards we demanded of their opponents.
 

What we do next

If we want evidence of a deeper turning, we can begin to create it.

We can correct a falsehood even when it favors our position. We can listen to someone's concern without pretending to agree with their conclusion. We can ask elected officials for concrete commitments, then follow what they actually do. We can give time to a local need, where service means showing up after the excitement has passed.

There is a temptation after an election to imagine that the important work has been handed over to the winners. Yet democracy depends on our continuing participation, and integrity depends on our continuing practice.

I hope something deeper is stirring. I hope more of us are becoming unwilling to accept dishonesty, humiliation, and the casual misuse of power as the ordinary cost of public life.

But hope asks something of me, too.

Can I remain open without becoming passive? Firm without becoming cruel? Willing to change my mind without abandoning what I know to be right?

Perhaps the question now is: what will we each do today to make the integrity we hoped to elect more visible in the world?

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Sources and acknowledgments

- Thanks to Gil Fronsdal for the inspiration behind my earlier reflection. His talks are available at https://www.audiodharma.org/.
- David Korten, “Origin of the Term”: https://davidkorten.org/great-turning/origin-of-the-term/
- Joanna Macy, “The End of Oil, Climate Change, and the Great Turning,” originally published in 2005, republished by Tricycle in 2026: https://tricycle.org/article/the-end-of-oil-climate-change-and-the-great-turning/
- Abdul El-Sayed, victory speech, November 4, 2026, transcript: https://www.rev.com/transcripts/abdul-el-sayed-victory-speech
- Rahm Emanuel, NPR interview, November 4, 2026: https://www.wrkf.org/npr-news/2026-11-04/rahm-emanuel-maps-out-a-vision-for-what-democrats-can-achieve-after-taking-congress
- The Eightfold Path, SN 45.8, translated by Bhikkhu Sujato: https://suttacentral.net/sn45.8/en/sujato