To crayon or not

"One day, Homer Simpson discovers that he has a crayon in his brain. It nestles between the soft grey folds as snug as a bug in a rug. Any effects the crayon might have are, apparently, negligible. It has been there for many years, ever since, as a child, he attempted to ram an entire box of crayons up his nose; an experiment aborted by a sneeze. Out flew all the crayons, bar this reluctant one. He had not noticed it at all.

Though now he knows about it, he is disconcerted and decides to have the crayon removed. The result is simultaneously amazing and alarming. It is amazing because, after the extraction, he finds himself equipped with new powers of intelligence. His raised appreciation of the world transforms his take on life and, in particular, brings him closer to Lisa, his clever and formerly rather intimidating, daughter. It is alarming because he cannot keep his new perspicuity to himself. What had been hidden from him – poor security at work, the bland- ness of a movie plot-line – now scream out at him as unbearably bad. In the story Homer blows the whistle on both and is ostracised by everyone around him; they don’t want to know about the threat to or the dreariness of life. Everyone, that is, except Lisa, who explains that intelligence has an inverse relationship to happiness: ignorance is bliss. Homer is faced with a choice: live without the crayon or have it put back. Moe, the bartender-cum-surgeon, reinserts it into his brain."

What choice would you have made, if you were in Homer's place? .....................Why?