By Jennifer Vogt-Erickson

Guest columnist

The brilliant Sir Isaac Newton described his accomplishments in physics with a sense of deep gratitude when he said, “If I have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

We all owe debts to inventions, innovations, scientific achievements, and philosophical movements that propelled humans out of the long Paleolithic Era and into new periods with ever-increasing speed. They have rocketed those of us privileged to be alive today into the Information Age.

The average American student on the street knows more about the world than the best-educated priest two millennia ago. And if the kid doesn’t know something, he or she can usually Google it in seconds.

It’s mind-blowing.

A hundred years ago, my two surviving great-grandmothers prepared meals on wood burning cook stoves, rode to town in wagons on rutted roads, and were still a few years away from eagerly tuning in radio broadcasts.

My other two great-grandmothers had already died of tuberculosis — in their 20s.

Do I have an easier (and longer) life because I have worked harder than these women who came before me? Not even close. Am I richer and have more opportunities because I have more gumption? No.

One of my great-grandmothers left her parents and siblings behind and crossed the Atlantic to see what she could make of her life. She never got to see them again. By the same age, I was jetting to Europe and the Caribbean for vacations.

This is phenomenal progress, and I’m not alone in enjoying many advantages that my great-grandmothers never dreamed of but helped make possible.

These strides have come at a huge cost that, for the most part, we in the present don’t bear. Why, then, is the idea of successful people being “self-made” so common? To think such a thing is alluring, but it negates the sacrifices of generations before us. It fails to appreciate their vision, courage, sweat, blood, and — too frequently — early deaths.

We don’t just benefit from our antecedents; we also depend on our contemporaries. John Donne wrote that “No man is an island entire of itself” in the 1600s. Is this wisdom less clear today?

Social ties make us stronger and improve our chances for survival and reproduction. People slowly built relationships over human history from the level of family to clan to kingdom to nation. Nations are the most powerful unit yet. E pluribus unum. Out of many, one.

Many modern nations are successful partly because they were built on the Enlightenment idea that individuals have certain inalienable rights, are equal, and should be given opportunities for leading a fulfilling life. Thinkers like Voltaire and John Locke shattered the conceit of divine right of kings and replaced it with new ideas like consent of the governed, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion.

The individual is, of course, instrumental and their rights must be protected, but if we don’t simultaneously recognize the necessity of the whole, we risk fragmentation.

Our willingness as a nation to come together around a common goal was a crucial factor in America’s emergence as a world power about a century ago. This included the individual World War I doughboys’ resolve to fight and, if necessary, give their lives to advance the Allied cause while civilians at home channeled as many materials to the war effort as possible.

People make sacrifices to the whole during peacetime as well, and one of the most important ways is through taxes. Yet some of the people who chant that “freedom isn’t free” when it comes to defending our country are the same ones who claim they are self-made and the government is “stealing” their money.

Elmer C. Andersen, a former Republican governor of Minnesota, addressed this line of thinking with great common sense: “Paying taxes is like going to a store. You don’t go to a store with the purpose of spending money. You go to obtain something you need or want. Taxes aren’t a loss of money; they are the price of essential services. It’s been an easy political game to promise tax cuts, and to make people feel sorry for themselves, when as a matter of fact the taxes people pay are probably the best investment they make. They can be proud to pay the price, if it lifts the standard of social life in their community and state. People need to be educated about government budgets, so they understand that tax money goes to services they want, and that if they don’t pay the price they suffer.”

We live in a dynamic state and a powerful country. Millions of people made much greater sacrifices than tax money to support this grand social experiment which has carried us so far. Happy Fourth of July.

Jennifer Vogt-Erickson lives with her husband and two children in Albert Lea. She is a former high school teacher who wrangles her toddlers by day and writes by night.