There are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity.

“Resident Evil” is the second Zach Cregger movie in a row about children. It opens with Bryan learning that his girlfriend is pregnant and suggesting, a little obliquely, that she get an abortion. “It’s your body. It’s your choice,” he says, and declares this to be “the best answer” he can give.

At the same time that Bryan suggests this, though, he is, in a manner of speaking, carrying a life of his own. Unbelievably, Bryan (a medical courier who transports cadaver organs from hospital to hospital) doesn’t know what’s in either of the coolers we see him carry in the film—however, Cregger leverages Bryan’s ignorance for thematic depth. He assumes the first cooler contains “a kidney or a liver,” but after getting into an argument with his girlfriend about her pregnancy, he begins claiming the second cooler contains “a baby’s heart.” Thus, Bryan subliminally adopts the position of his pregnant girlfriend.

Over the following two acts, Bryan has many reasons to leave the “baby’s heart” behind—because a zombie apocalypse begins while he’s en route from one hospital to the other, and there’s little chance that the organ will be worth much after so much time elapses. Still, he doggedly holds on to the little green cooler, even treating it like a little person (seatbelted into his car for safety) even though it slows him down and inconveniences him.

By the end of the film, though, Bryan learns that the green cooler doesn’t contain a baby’s heart, but medicine that can save the world. While in the basement of a parking garage, looking at the stick figure family decal on the back of a minivan, he records a message for his girlfriend, who he never expects to see again, and says that he “hates” the answer he gave to her earlier, and that he wants her to have the baby, and that he wants to have the baby with her.

The whole film flies in the face of the lately deceased Gloria Steinem, who famously said, “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” Bryan’s typological pregnancy inclines him to think more highly of the unborn, not less.

What is more, Bryan’s softened heart is not a matter of sentimentality, for when he leaves the message for his girlfriend, he has begun suffering the fatal body-transforming effects of an infection that was passed on to him by the only child in the film. Neither carrying a child nor raising a child is safe or easy, but safety be damned. The world must be peopled.

I had this exchange on LinkedIn recently and I found it a profound example of what is actually meant by the term “independent thinker.” This fellow I was chatting with, a PhD who teachers at a university, said his daughter was an independent thinker and a feminist and therefore wouldn’t marry at 19. One has to wonder what kind of “independence” this is, given that it doesn’t entail the independence (the autonomy and freedom) to choose when she will marry.

Perhaps the daughter in question was told, “Feminists don’t marry when they’re 19.” But that necessarily means, “Feminists have acceptable ages for marriage dictated to them by their fathers.”

And yet, this sort of thing is normally what I think of when someone talks about being “an independent thinker.”

“Independence” is just a by-word for a predetermined, laughably narrow set of fashionably new ideas.

Foie gras dumplings with leek jam and bone broth at Canard.

Made for a week spent in Los Angeles.

10. Metropolitan (1990), dir. Whit Stillman

9. Empire of the Sun (1987), dir. Steven Spielberg

8. Vertigo (1958), dir. Alfred Hitchcock

7. Birth (2004), dir. Jonathan Glazer

6. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), dir. Stanley Kubrick

5. The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), dir. Anthony Minghella

4. Sans Soleil (1983), dir. Chris Marker

3. Lost in Translation (2003), dir. Sofia Coppola

2. Some Like It Hot (1959), dir. Billy Wilder

1. The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), dir. Wes Anderson

Very few record labels have influenced my taste in music quite like the LateNightTales series. From the moment I heard Air’s mix twenty years ago, I was hooked.

This new entry from Barry Can’t Swim is incredible. Highest recommendation.

HEADMASTER: Thanks for meeting with me. We need to discuss your daughter’s senior thesis proposal.

DAD: Yes, her mother and I are quite excited for her. I think it will prove a project where the entire school, even the faculty and board, learns a lot.

HEADMASTER: Could you tell me in your own words what your daughter’s thesis is?

DAD: Maeve has proposed an argument in favor of suicide. The thesis statement she gave to her advisor is: Suicide is morally and theologically allowable.

HEADMASTER: I cannot allow a student to make such an argument. She’s going to have to choose something else.

DAD: Has she told you about her proofs yet? Her arguments?

HEADMASTER: She has. However, arguments are beside the point.

DAD: Arguments are beside the point. Interesting. How come?

HEADMASTER: This is a Christian school and Christianity has a rather long tradition of condemning suicide.

DAD: But what about her arguments? Her arguments come from classical thinkers and Christian thinkers. She’s referencing Augustine, Dante, Goethe. There’s a strong biblical component to her argument, as well, with very carefully interpreted passages from Judges and I Kings. Doesn’t her argument matter?

HEADMASTER: Not really. This is a school, sir, and Maeve will present her thesis to a large group of her peers. I can’t have an intelligent, well-liked student—a model student, really—tell high school freshmen that God doesn’t mind if they kill themselves.

DAD: But her arguments—

HEADMASTER: She may have come up with a very sophisticated way of arguing in favor of suicide, but suicide is wrong. It’s not up for debate.

DAD: There’s nothing in the school statement of faith about suicide, though.

HEADMASTER: Maybe there should be. Look, I have to admit that I’m surprised that Maeve of all people would want to make such an argument. Doesn’t your family attend a Latin Mass Catholic church?

DAD: We do. Maeve regularly takes jabs from her classmates about it, too.

HEADMASTER: What would your priest think if he heard your daughter was arguing in favor of suicide?

DAD: I don’t think he would be too happy.

HEADMASTER: Then—

DAD: Maeve never intended to present a thesis to her peers on the moral allowability of suicide.

HEADMASTER: Then why did she write this proposal?

DAD: Well, sometimes people propose to do one thing as a way of accomplishing something completely different. Like when Solomon commanded that an infant be cut in half. He ordered it, but he didn’t want it.

HEADMASTER: Then what does Maeve actually want to her write her thesis about?

DAD: Education. Classical education, actually. She wants to investigate the claim that this school teaches students “how to think, not what to think,” which she hears all the time. And which is all over the school website.

HEADMASTER: She wants to investigate it?

DAD: Yes, because she doesn’t think it’s true. She believes that students at this school are taught what to think and how to think—and she wants to argue that a good education involves teaching students both how and what to think.

HEADMASTER: So why did she first propose to write her thesis on the moral allowability of suicide?

DAD: Research. Research to help prove her point. You don’t care how elegant, sophisticated, and well-cited an argument in favor of suicide is. It can’t be argued at this school. The how doesn’t matter, only the what. If this school only cared for teaching students how to think, there could be no objection to an elegant, sophisticated, well-cited argument for suicide. But you do care about the what of an argument, as well, and the long haul of Christian history has determined a good deal of the what—far more of the what, in fact, than modern Christians commonly admit. Honestly, I’m very glad a well-researched argument in favor of suicide is being shut down. Some things aren’t up for debate. Many things aren’t up for debate, in fact.

HEADMASTER: But Maeve’s point is particularly angled at this school, though.

DAD: A good many classical Christian schools claim to teach students “how, not what.”

HEADMASTER: What does Maeve think she can gain from arguing this?

DAD: In her time at this school, Maeve has seen many teachers get squeamish about coming down hard on moral, cultural, theological, and aesthetic issues. When a student asks a significant question about what is right and wrong, good or bad, pious or impious, teachers present both sides, back off, and tell students they have to choose. And Maeve sees her classmates choosing bad positions over and over again, which is why she believes her classmates need more what and less how.

HEADMASTER: I’ll grant that students need to be taught what to think, but only to a certain extent. And if I told prospective parents that their children would be taught “what to think,” they’d regard it as an open admission the school was authoritarian and propagandistic. The very idea of “teaching people what to think” is widely regarded as fascist and cultish.

DAD: Yes, any culture which wants to democratize the truth will believe that, but a classical education isn’t a democracy. It’s a hierarchy. It’s an arrangement of greater to lesser glory. The idea that this school teaches students “how to think, not what” might get more people enrolled, but that doesn’t make it right. Look, Maeve isn’t going to argue we should do away with logic classes and rhetoric classes. Her argument is that you can’t teach students how to think without also teaching them what to think. The two simply go together.

HEADMASTER: She wants her teachers to be more opinionated?

DAD: Yep.

HEADMASTER: Won’t parents be upset if their children are definitively taught things their families don’t believe?

DAD: As a Latin Mass Catholic sending his children to a Protestant school, it’s never been a problem for me. I would rather my children have teachers with strong backbones who occasionally say things I disagree with than wishy-washy teachers who live in fear of getting yelled at.

This post originally appeared on The CiRCE Institute blog.