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Your interpretation is a bit of an exaggeration of what I'm saying, but not completely off base.
Civic duty to whom? Which group? And how much of that duty can I expect will be reciprocated? At the national level... not much. Most people can't 'meaningfully participate' in a national 'community' in the U.S. because its just too big for them to have any noticeable, appreciable effect, and it's dominated by insiders!
There are certainly those who are good at making people feel like they had such an effect, though! But this reads to me as exploitation.
I'm not suggesting political apathy is the best path (okay, being honest, for many, many people it might be!). Only that much political activity is essentially throwing one's time, effort, and money into a machine that will only occasionally spit out a return on the investment, and usually it will be less than you put in, so one should be judicious about how much they insert.
And in the most heavily contested elections its all a red Queen's race/Molochian spiral, the more money and effort one candidate throws in, the more the other has to throw in attempting to counter, yet the outcome needle will barely move to the extent their efforts cancel out. That's a lot of resources being burned for effectively no gain!
Speaking of cancelling out, one thing I keep coming back to is how overhyped voting is, for any national-level position, because you can spend hours of time becoming informed about the issues and candidates and determining the 'optimal' vote to cast for your preferred outcome... only to be cancelled out by some yahoo that either doesn't investigate the issues or just listened to a pundit and chose that way. It makes more sense to find someone else who would vote opposite you and both agree to stay home for all the impact you have on the outcome.
Note that I make the exception for local elections and issues where the chances of you casting a deciding vote are substantially increased.
EVEN THEN, the marginal returns on getting heavily involved and actively contributing substantial funds and time to campaigns are TINY for any person who doesn't happen to have outsized influence in a given community. i.e. a celebrity or other 'elite' member that others look to for guidance.
And by definition, it is impossible for everyone to have an outsized influence.
In short, it's a power law distribution. 80+% of the outcome is attributable to <20% of the people's efforts. My attempts to sway opinions will be far less impactful than a political pundit with 100k+ listeners will be. Does this mean I don't attempt to sway opinions? Nah. In fact, I just put in targetted efforts towards the few people I'm most likely to be able to sway (my own family, generally speaking) and don't bother much beyond that.
If you consider that becoming more politically active is likely to cause you to lose friends and connections you might have otherwise maintained, then it is entirely possible for political activity to produce a significant and consistent negative return for you!
SO:
Explain to me how my life will become happier and more fulfilled or I'll become wealthier and more influential by becoming way more politically involved (read: devote more than an average of 5 hours/week to political causes and campaigns).
Further, explain how dating someone who is heavily politically involved will make my life happier or more fulfilled, even assuming they agree with me on object-level politics.
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