So the cause of the current dystopia is largely the ripple effect of man's desire to dominate over centuries.

The creation of multiple empires and emperors which are still moving towards even greater empire. Empire addiction is when this gets out of hand and the empire is even hurting itself while it tries to expand because it has lost control of itself and its behavior to be in some kind of empire mode and so as the spot that feeds this addiction reaches a certain point the fish lets say is going to explode from over eating because it can't stop eating. Maybe there is only one empire left and that is conquering the problems within and within.