用“昨日的我”批判“今日的我”

[Fred0]

用“昨日的我”批判“今日的我”。 

 

With yesterday's me, criticize today's me.   (?)  What is this saying?

[WenLei-William]

I think it can be translated as: "Judging/Critiquing one‘s current self using a younger version of oneself (as a standard of measurement)."

 

To me it means that you are comparing yourself to your former self and making judgements about yourself from said comparison. Maybe the writer has changed over time and they're comparing how they are now with how they were some time ago.

[dwq]

There is a common saying, 「今天的我打倒昨天的我」, that is used to criticize people who make statements and then, some time later say some completely contradicting things.

 

It could be a government official who finds it convenient to promise something during election and then gives some bs reason to renege on them afterwards, or some celebrity saying how much he loves his wife and then got caught cheating who then tries to give excuses, etc.

 

In these cases, we say that their "Today's selves" (今天的我) attempt to defeat (打倒) their "Yesterday's selves" (昨天的我).

 

Even though this is mostly used in a negative fashion, and thus more likely to be spoken by a third person than by the first person (though that is not unheard of), 我 is usually kept and not 他 / 她 , in the sense of "self / oneself".

 

「用“昨日的我”批判“今日的我”」  is not quite common, but you should be able to extrapolate its meaning from the above.

[Daniel Tsui44]

It is close to that to bring up the good part of the past to criticise how terrible nowadays is.  It's like the idiom 借古讽今。Anyway, it may be a different meaning, it depends on the situation.