I have a friend I call Crazy Charlie ~ he chats and sometimes argues with people who aren’t around ~ I have a theory about Charlie ~ his ‘band path filters’ are worn out ~  allowing fuzzy signals of thought to slip through and travel the same pathways as signals coming from his senses ~ making it hard for him to distinguish between the sound of his ‘inner voices’ and the sound of other people’s voices ~ often the voices of people he doesn’t get along with ~  which leads me to another theory ~  thoughts from his subconscious mind ~ opinions he’s not aware of  ~  get amp’d and slip through there as well ~ arriving on the same channel as a co-worker saying hello in the morning ~ which may be another reason he has trouble holding a job ~ in fact, there’s so much chatter going on up there ~ he’s always hearing voices ~ either out on the street ~ or down from the sky ~ saying things like: “what’s the matter with you ..your hair’s too long ..why do you act so strange ..and where do you do your shopping .. the salvation army” ~  pretty soon they become fighting words ~ which turn into shouting matches ~ followed by periods of observation ~ ordinarily I would say ~ the best way to avoid these confrontations is to recognize that the voices you hear are your own ~ then attempt some sort of reconciliation ~ however, in Charlie’s case, I say blow them off ~ treat the voices  ~  both inside and out ~ as though they are the ranting of  a raving lunatic you might hear on the street ~ shouting that the world is about to end ~ or that aliens have taken over the government ~ something like that ~ because, you see ~ they’re easier to ignore that way ~ you can always be sure there’s another lunatic out there with a  band path filter that is in more urgent need of repair than your own.