A self is the locus of agency

A self, then, is the outcome of a process, unique to life, of maintaining and perpetuating an individual form, a form that, as it is iterated over the generations, grows to fit the world around it at the same time that it comes to exhibit a certain circular closure that allows it to maintain its selfsame identity, which is forged with respect to that which it is not; anteaters re-present previous representations of ant tunnels in their lineage, but they are not themselves ant tunnels. Insofar as it strives to maintain its form, such a self acts for itself. A self, then, whether "skin-bound" or more distributed, is the locus of what we can call agency.

Eduardo Kohn, How Forests Think (University of California Press, 2013) p.76

To be a thing is to be nonsensical

Awareness of ourselves as another "nonhuman" entity has to do with our knowledge, now including logical proofs, that even our thoughts and logical systems evade us. Despite our intentions, they have a life of their own, which means, despite our fantasies that they are totally coherent, they are in fact fragile, like lifeforms. To be a logical system is to be able to speak nonsense because to be a thing is to be nonsensical. Ecognosis has to do with allowing for this nonsensical, pestiferous dimension of things. A thought, a lizard, a spoon veer from themselves. To be a thing is to be a deviation. A thing, a thought, a sentence are per-ver-se. An en-vir-onment is not a closed circle but a veering loop. A thing is in a loop with itself: a thing and a thing-pattern, asymmetrical, which is why there can be patterns at all – which is why there can be replication. Which is why there can be organic chemicals, lifeforms, and sentences about patterns.

Timothy Morton, Dark Ecology (Columbia University Press, 2016) p.96

If nature is a kaleidoscope of species

If nature is a kaleidoscope of species, constantly reorganizing and adapting, then newcomers will come and go, often in largely random ways. They will fit in as they can, with no more likelihood of doing harm or good than natives. They are not good or bad, not at a special advantage or disadvantage. They just are. This doesn't mean there isn't any evolution going on. Far from it. There is growing evidence, as we shall see later, that the arrival of new species often creates a burst of evolution and hybridization among both hosts and newcomers as they learn to rub along. But the context is a dynamic, open and unpredictable environment, rather than one in which a fixed group of natives is working to some idealized perfect state.

Fred Pearce, The New Wild (Icon Books Ltd, 2016) pp. 189-190