This transformation of ones possessive desire is the common project of the Ethics and of Spinozas political writing. Both ethics and politics, from a Spinozian perspective, train ones comportment toward possession. In the Ethics, one learns to have and to hold otherwise. The tendency to imagine the beloved as situated within an economy of scarce resources tains love with sadness and subjects the soul, or mind, to violent vacilation (fluctuation animi) and discomfort, which undermines the freedom and fortitude of the individual. This admittedly abstract account conveys the need to comport oneself toward "ordinary love," or the love of finite individuals, so as to open oneself and ones beloveds onto increasingly joyful engagements with other natural beings. Envious and avaricious love is conservative and exclusive is a way that harms both the lover and the beloved. This maddening and initial joyful encounters and thereby ironically thwarts the very amplification of power that first provokes our love.