It makes sense that we'd expect to observe civilizations that are good at growing and have in fact already grown, right? Same reason we observe animals with a s

It makes sense that we'd expect to observe civilizations that are good at growing and have in fact already grown, right? Same reason we observe animals with a strong sense of self-preservation. These hypothetical expanding civilizations might be awful or unnecessary by our standards but that doesn't change how memetic/biological/whatever selection processes generally work. This is why the Fermi Paradox is interesting in the first place!