IMO the dyson sphere model assumes energy demands go up exponentially as if we are some cancer growing unchecked with no constraints. How we "should" be is rooted in bias. E.g. modern life is certainly not that healthy for a lot of people, mentally and physically. Maybe living a more primitive life, closer to how we evolved as a species before our rapid cultural evolution phase and desire to make short term profit with all the low hanging resources on earth, might make you more likely to die from various disease without modern medicine. During that lifespan, however, you might have overall better physical health or even mental health being a forager who has to worry about little beyond what you can see in front of you. No existential worries, plenty of physical activity.
We are the only species on earth who lives like this, reorienting how lifestyles should work with every generation, iterating towards not biological efficiency but to further individual resource accumulation supported by society. I think its far more likely most intelligent life in the galaxy looks more like a pod of whales or a herd of gazelle than human society, which is inefficient and selfish in most respects.
> Maybe living a more primitive life, closer to how we evolved as a species before our rapid cultural evolution phase and desire to make short term profit with all the low hanging resources on earth ...
I find this nostalgia for a time when a broken bone was a death sentence to be the misdirection of valid frustration and legitimate grievances. Modern technology in many ways has been great. What hasn't been great is the capitalist organization of the economy that constnatly demands extracting every ounce of value from us so a handful of people can get even more ludicrously wealthy.
Subsistence living has a really low population density. To get to that point would mean a massive decrease in our current population. That's going to be traumatic no matter how it goes down.
If there were more equitable distribution of wealth today, we'd be incredibly well off.
As for continually expanding, that's... every species on Earth. It's necessary for survival. A species might have a bad year and the population needs to recover. Individuals may not successfuly produce the next geneation. Every species on Earth expands to fill available resources.
A complete Dyson Swarm around our Sun would (IIRC) take 1% of Mercury's mass to build, give enough living area per person about the size of Africa and have enough energy per person about what the world as a whole world currently consumes. This represents unimaginable possibilities for freedom.
But again, the Fermi Paradox is not viewed as what the likely outcome is for a given species but whether all species will follow that path. How likely really do you think it would be that no civilization would continue expanding to gain access to more energy and resources?
We are the only species on earth who lives like this, reorienting how lifestyles should work with every generation, iterating towards not biological efficiency but to further individual resource accumulation supported by society. I think its far more likely most intelligent life in the galaxy looks more like a pod of whales or a herd of gazelle than human society, which is inefficient and selfish in most respects.