Orwell was an optimist. Perhaps this is sarcasm, but maybe we're already well beyond the threshold of the negative utopia depicted in Orwell's 1984. The grasp that big brother has on the population is tighter than it has ever been. The insidious plots of the inner party far more grotesque.
The thought control over humanity much more advanced and difficult to detect. The propaganda works so well that there aren't many left who can see it. It begs the question that maybe Orwell was looking on the bright side of things when he wrote Nineteen Eighty Four.