According to Wikipedia the expression “standing on the shoulders of giants” originated with William of Conches:

The ancients had only the books which they themselves wrote, but we have all their books and moreover all those which have been written from the beginning until our time.… Hence we are like a dwarf perched on the shoulders of a giant. The former sees further than the giant, not because of his own stature, but because of the stature of his bearer. Similarly, we [moderns] see more than the ancients, because our writings, modest as they are, are added to their great works.

I was going to say that the dwarfs despise the giants for being so damn short and lowly, but I think that adds little to the original.

So, yeah, what William of Conches said: we all intellectually, and in some ways morally, perch upon the shoulders of giants.

But I think we lose something crucial when we assume that we’d have been born at this height, even if the giants had never lived. Civilization did little or nothing to make us as gentle and informed as we are. Without civilization we would have been born baby saints in paradise.

And we become depraved with ingratitude when we start blaming our tower of giants for holding us down. We want to punch down, and kick down, drop heavy rocks and molten lead, pour buckets of acid and maim and kill the giants so we can untether ourselves from this dirt and float up to perfect heaven where we really belong.