Abner Dean's Notebook, Part II.

[See here for part 1, which explains some things.]

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This thing has meaning [click on images to enlarge]

The beginnings of philosophy -- now if you can only find the meaning you have the all. But it’s good even if you only come to the point of suspecting a meaning. If you can be part of the flow and aware of it at the same time (which doesn’t seem apparent here) you can get out of your bucket.

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Some days I feel confident

Confidence in itself has no real validity -- mayhem and horror have been created by people with confidence. Humanity should always be, perhaps, in a state of semi-confidence. Confidence obscures awareness -- resists understanding and denies relationships and rights. No man individually has a right to confidence.

In a different pen, Dean added "(individually)" with an arrow indicating that this word should be inserted after "man." So, the final sentence first read: No man has a right to confidence. Dean's philosophy emphasized that understanding our connection with others was crucial if we were to understand ourselves, so it's not surprising that he would see the "right to confidence" in social terms.