People have been incredibly more ignorant in the past, it's the power brokers and influencers (wealth, media, political class, etc) that guided the unwashed masses to at least somewhat expedient futures previously, but who now seem to have either vacated their responsibility / succumbed to greed or short-term thinking or alternatively some breakdown of systems of power and democracy because of technology or legal changes and their effect on media, fragmentation of public knowledge, erosion of institutions, etc.

On a very real level, we have better technology, more people learning greater chunks of knowledge, higher literacy rates, etc. than we did in the 1700s or 1800s or 1900s, so you can't blame widespread ignorance alone.