The Palantíri were the original the two-way telescreens.
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It took a while for this to percolate through the back of my brain and come to an adequate response:
Nobody in Tolkien’s universe has ultimate agency. Even Eru’s plans are messed up, and he has to improvise. But actions have consequences, and not just on the person who did the thing. Actions have resonance, and one person’s bad choices can have effects on people long after them, for bad or ill. Ar-Pharazôn’s bad life choices had consequences on the whole world, and on the surviving Numenoreans. Not because those Numenoreans deserved it, or had some Original Sin, but because after Ar-Pharazôn things were more broken and couldn’t easily be put right. Whatever “put right” might mean. Aragorn could never have had a lifetime close to a pre-fall Numenorean, but Boromir could never have had a lifetime close to Aragorn’s. None of this is either of their fault. It’s a consequence of their ancestry, but has no hold over their own choices in the now. Who they descended from has consequences on them (as it does on any of us), but it doesn’t excuse their actions, nor does it enforce them. Every sapient being has the option of choosing to do the right thing in the moment. (Except, possibly, for orcs and trollies, and Tolkien struggled with that Gordion Knot that he’d written into the world for his whole life.)
Aragorn didn’t win an extension to his own lifespan simply by virtue of his virtue. Arwen’s elvish lifespan turned out to be a curse to her, because it wouldn’t save her husband, and she couldn’t easily just die to be with him: they went to different places without extraordinary special dispensation, which she wouldn’t find out if she had it until she either woke up in the Undying Lands or went to the Halls of Mandos and changed track to the afterlife of the humans. (And even that was a curse, because it meant she would never see her birth family again.) She was “rewarded” for her virtue and her love with suffering, confusion, doubt, and a long fading.
Some people live longer. Some people die young. Whether they are a good person might be informed by that, but it’s still a choice, not a destiny. I think the contrast there isn’t between Boromir and Aragorn, but between Boromir and Faramir. Boromir was a hero, full of confidence and mighty virtue. And he slipped, just for a moment. Faramir was young, distrusted by his father, uncertain and yearning for the glory of his brother. And he was strongly tempted, but did the right thing.
It’s about the choices you make in the circumstances you find yourself in.
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