Still not a good answer for the fermi paradox, it only takes one to light up a galaxy.

Yes, but imagine you are a civilization, that is smart enough to develop the idea of a Fermi paradox. If you are the first such civilization, you believe yourself to be one among thousands in your galaxy -- but yet, you get no radio signatures (or other signatures) of intelligent life. You might conclude, that the very act of obtaining technology predisposes your civilization (and the others who disappeared before you) to a shortened lifespan. Accordingly, you assume (wrongly) that to transmit or seek out radio signals, is going to 'f' you up down the road. You, and the 2d civilization after you, and the third, etc., internally agree to go the Amish way... and you have an infinite loop that repeats.

Think what you are suggesting. In all the possibilities where life grows it evolves exactly in one sociological way as you suggested.

Yet the one sample we have, us, doesn't fit the pattern

We don't have a pattern, until we drive our population down to 1 million, or we find evidence of an existing or extinguished alien civilization. At the rate we are going, none of these three are going to happen in our lifetime. If only the Vulcan Amish could turn on a radio station... just once every 100 years, in celebration of their Vulcan Amishness... Maybe a pirate Vulcan Amish radio station. You can only hope.