I wonder if the breakdown in your theory is the extreme continuity of adulthood. Every 2-4 years, youth is marked by moving to new schools (and sometimes towns); for adults, only job changes seem as significant -- and, if it's a job in the same area, is much less disruptive to your friend group, since your friends are likely completely independent of your workplace, unlike school friendships.
Similarly, in adulthood people tend not to reach out as far to make new friends, so there's a lot fewer embarrassing mishaps to make you question your past self's judgement.
For disruptive adult changes that mark time, I'd also add moving and global pandemics.
Next pandemic we're going to cringe so hard at how we behaved during this one.
By the one after that we'll totally forgive ourselves though.
I definitely have times where I intensely dislike myself as I am right now. Unfortunately, for me not a useful guide to anything-- one week, I dislike myself for not caring enough (or effectively enough) about others. The next month, the obvious problem is not enough perspective, attachments lead to unsound judgement. Too ambitious? yes! here are the unfortunate consequences. Also, not enough output, so not enough ambition.
Considering temporally displaced selves amplifies the problem, sure, but I firmly believe that with enough attention to the chaotic legion of thoughts and actions that pass for an identity, the same whiplash between self-compassion and self-contempt can obtain even without recourse to the past.
In conclusion,
Money can't buy back
Your youth when you're old
Or a friend when you're lonely
Or a love that's grown cold
The wealthiest person
Is a pauper at times
Compared to the man
With a satisfied mind
Do you think the Ship of Theseus feels this discomfort partway through its transformation? "who even am I?"
5.last: This is a good version (which I may have linked before): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJMZ1bi5g8c
Kind to a past version of myself?? I would never!
I still cringe plenty at aspects of my high school and young adult self.
Some young adult cringes will certainly be with me until I die,* even though intellectually I fully subscribe to the 7 year self replacement theory of humans.
*or in the case of a merely professional embarassment about 10 years ago, until they die. It's a sliding scale of mortification.
I certainly have regrets over things my younger self said and did, and didn't do but I don't find my younger self cringe-worthy. I think that might be because I've grown more forgiving of my younger self, and others (for the most part) as I've gotten older.
1: the weird thing about the academy is that almost all of my friends are work friends even though I've been here a decade.
Is that just because everyone else was raised in Utah?
I am cringing at a stupid decision I made last evening.
I cringe at myself so often that under this theory I'll evolve to a pure energy life form by the time I'm 50.
I have thoughts about the OP, but they are kind of inchoate. Thinking about your childhood is different when you have just spent lots of time around the people you grew up with (I guess assuming you usually don't see them). It hits different and not like something so remote.
15: Yeah, I was gonna say. Must be nice for all these folks who look back on how foolish and despicable they used to be.
Obviously, the major factor in childhood is whether you were born before or after we had to send the pony away.
I expect to cringe when I read this comment in a few minutes.
16: Blundered on a home maintenance project by unthinking obstinacy and subsequent application of brute force (which I though I had slowly learned over my lifetime is almost never a winning strategy--apparently not).
Brought up unwelcome memories of how shit I am at stuff like that in general.
Joseph Heller wrote a book that contained advice to the effect of: Never force anything mechanical or kick anything inanimate. I have tried to live by those words of wisdom, but have not always succeeded.
I feel like I have less of a cringe reaction to myself than most people. I did something in high school that was meant to publicly liken the school policy requiring us to visibly wear student IDs to concentration camp tattoos, but I don't have strong feelings looking back on that, although it seems like the kind of thing that would provoke such. I was in high school!
That's an actual career if you decide to stop being ethical.
Person who makes inappropriate yellow-Star-of-David badges on Etsy.
14: Somewhat. The LDS faith can be extremely insular; members are kept busy with activities nearly every night of the week, so it's harder as an outsider to make friends (even on the assumption that they're not seriously prejudiced against non-Mormons. Most of the time it's innocent, but it can still be hard for e.g. the elementary schoolers who hear all their school friends talking about all the activities and parties they never go to.) Mostly it's just that we moved here and then popped out the babies, who take all of our time and also attended the lab preschool with the other faculty brats, so it's just hard to meet people who aren't affiliated with the university. It's fine, but if I lost my job here I fully expect we'd move. There's nothing else keeping us here except maybe the Calabat's assumption that skiing every weekend is just how winter goes.
I admit I have trouble socializing with people who don't drink.
24 -- Why not kick anything inanimate? I mean, the pain is likely to be yours. It does scan better than "kick anything animate". 'Never force a machine or kick a creature'?
You've raised a child with the right assumptions